Reading with Jean-Luc Godard 1927852463, 9781927852460

Citation preview

Reading UJith JEAN-LUC GODARD

preface and coda Fredric Jameson Timothy Barnard Kevin J. Hayes

editors

caboose

Montreal

PREPARED WITHOUT FINANCIAL AS SI STANCE, PUBLIC OR PRIVATE.

This edition © copyright 2 0 2 3 Timothy Barnard Individual texts © each author English translation of the following texts © copyright Timothy Barnard: H. Alleg, S. Beckett, M. Blanchot, H. Broch, R. Descartes, M. Duras, P. EJuard, M. Heidegger, A. Rimbaud, G. Rocha, P. Valery No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, who holds exclusive publication rights. First edition. Published by caboose, www. caboosebooks.net. Cataloguing information for this volume can be found on the last page. Designed and typeset in Janson type by Marina Uzunova and Timothy Barnard. Paperback cover and hardcover end paper photographs ofJean-Luc Godard's archives © copyright and courtesy of Stephan Crasneanscki from his book

What We Leave Behind. Printed in Sweden by By Wind on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®) certified paper.

Contents

Vll

xi

A Life in Books Fredric Jameson A Note on the Text Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

333

Godard hors texte Fredric Jameson

337

Table of Entries

3 47

Principal Sources

363

Works Consulted

381

Index of Works by Jean-Luc Godard

3 89

Film Index

393

Title Index

4° 5 42 1

Name Index Table of Contributors

Life in Books Fredric Jameson

A

What is a film-essai? Is it a genre on the order of the fiction film or the documentary? Viewers of Chris Marker or even Dziga Vertov might be tempted to find it a useful and distinctive classification for films which are neither fiction nor documentary. They did not make westerns or melodramas, thrillers or comedies, war films or spy intrigues. Deleuze might have characterised them as producers of mental images. But Godard made all of these; why call them essay films? I sup­ pose it is because every so often the action slows down, the charac­ ters start to read books (or at least quote from them), look at pictures, engage in philosophical conversations. The present book catalogues the sources of those quotations, those conversations, those enigmatic sentences over which protagonists and even the narrator-Godard himself-brood for a time. The object of their baffled wonderment is, however, not this or that thought but rather the material word, the phrase as image, the sentence as a reified quotation. Hence the relevance of the term essay in the expression film-essai: it sends us back to Montaigne, father of the essay form, or non-form, whose 'book' grew out of a chap­ book or j ournal in which he noted down bits and pieces of writing that interested him. His essais were not really coherent essays in the modern sense, with topics and beginnings and endings; his quota­ tions remind us of Benjamin's remark: 'Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out, armed, and relieve the stroller of his convictions ' . Godard's quotations are not even thoughts, or the building blocks of this or that philosophy or world-view, which the film containing them would somehow be 'about' . Indeed, such is their random character that they confirm, for some, Godard's

VIII

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

persona as a dilettante or amateur philosopher 'who picks up a book or two a day, reads parts of them and throws them away, only to remember an excerpt the next day, whereupon he-or someone else-has to go back to the bookstore to pick up another copy'. As for the essay, however, Montaigne was also the ancestor of a distinctive French tradition to which it does not seem wrong to attach Godard, namely that of les moralistes-La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, La Bruyere, Vauvenargues, Montaigne himself (to which we must not forget to include the great Spanish moraliste Gracian, and in which we might also include Godard's sometime comrade Eric Rohmer). In an arc which bends from Machiavelli to Nietzsche, these are observers who have little enough to do with ethics or morality and even less with psychology, and who note habits and patterns of what we must not any longer call an essentialised human nature, but rather the socialised individual in some well-nigh military strategic or tactical framework. Godard is, to be sure, a great psychologist of marriage and the couple, perhaps of women's psychology more generally; but he was happy enough to stage himself an autodidact: 'I watch myself film­ ing and you hear me thinking aloud' . He was a real Parisian in­ tellectual (that is, a Swiss arriving in the intellectual capital of the world), brought up on the culture of the 1 92 0s and 30s, on Girau­ doux and Cocteau, on Peguy, on the novels of Julien Green, on his own Swiss literature as well (Ramuz), and imbued with the modern French culture of the period-Balzac, Proust, the surrealists, trans­ lations of Faulkner and Virginia Woolf (all of these are entries here). Paul Valery was a friend of his grandfather. Andre Gide took the teenager to the memorable 1 947 'lecture' of Antonin Artaud at the Vieux-Colombier. Like any self-respecting post-war intellectual, he was an avid movie-goer, and after the Liberation he saw the first Italian neo-realist films and participated in Bazin's cine-clubs. He would have absorbed enough pre-war and Occupation film produc­ tion (Duvivier, Les Enfants du Paradis) to know how different the belatedly new American westerns and action films were and to un­ derstand what his comrade Frarn;ois Truffaut had in mind when he scandalously called for the demolition of what he called the 'cinema de papa', the 'cinema of quality'. A different kind of reading sets in when Godard begins his own belated evolution from film reviewer and critic to filmmaker. It is not

A LIFE IN BOOKS

IX

film theory which (ever) interested him-rather, Henri Langlois' eclecticism over Bazin's construction of values-but the history of art-and in particular his sometime master Andre Malraux, along with the Serie noire, the masterpieces and the B-movies. Here the readings have a desperate quality, serving to answer the questions of the hapless beginner: I don't know what this film is about, I don't even know who I am myself. The success of A bout de souffie led him to think he was in control of the medium, yet this professionalism was a mirage he would later never want; and the whole thing breaks off and seeks a new beginning after Algeria and May 68, with the Palestinians, Gorin and Maoism-when quotes from the Chairman and from Lenin begin to organise a series of unfinished political projects. When all of these come to an end-why and when? the 1 980s? the neo-liberal era? the European Union? neo-colonialism?-radical changes in the filmic infrastructure also begin to appear. Godard has always felt the urge to interiorise his production problems and to make room within his films for the distractions of financial backing and the unreliability of backers and producers, who often changed the very course of a film in progress. Now the emergence of the digi­ tal makes new images possible at the same time that video threatens the very distribution of classical film itself: a historical experience rarely so directly accessible or unavoidable in the other arts, particu­ larly in literature, and a genuine historical break. As such the digital's portability and quotability make a new approach to cinema possible. A new period will then gradually evolve, dominated for him by a figure like Marguerite Duras, herself a filmmaker as well as a writer; but also by the approach of new kinds of wars and atrocities in the B alkans, new kinds of filmic documentation. With Saraj evo and Srebrenica, then, cinema ceases to be the older film-essay (if it ever was), and its filmed wars produce an archive of properly filmic quo­ tations which, superimposed in properly filmic montages, give rise to a new kind of historical consciousness. The history of film slowly becomes History itself, and Godard could cease to make standard 'filmed' films and begin to 'write' Histoire(s) du cinema. But we are not obliged to use this book biographically or like an encyclopaedia. It is, as it were, an immense rhizome, the space of Godard's mind, inside which the various opinions, allusions, refer­ ences and ideological slogans are positioned like so much furniture,

x

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

which sometimes goes out of style and which you replace with some­ thing older or newer. Or like so many journals and old newspapers which pile up and serve as documentation or for clippings later on. Think of it as a cut-up book, a la Mallarme or Burroughs, out of which you can fashion your own ideograms or eclectic images of thought. There are various different pictures of Godard here, hid­ den in the foliage like an Arcimbaldo portrait, if you care to look for them.

A

Note on the Text

Whether we characterise the manner in which they are acted upon as quoting, rewriting, repurposing, montage, collage or any number of other descriptions, books and other texts are central to the ideas and mise en scene ofJean-Luc Godard's work. As Fredric Jameson re­ marks in one of the two short essays with which the present volume is blessed, these practices demonstrate a connection to the text which goes beyond mere influence. The intellectual and artistic processes we witness in Godard's work appear, rather, to be a kind of simulta­ neous enactment of the ideas found in these texts and transmutation of the forms the texts take-indeed of their very materiality. It is hoped that this collaborative volume approximates, in some small way, both the great sweep of Godard's reading and interests on the one hand and his fine-grained approach to the vast array of texts which have commanded his attention on the other. It is further hoped that this necessarily dense exploration of Godard's textual practices-an exploration aerated by the volume's format of lively and readable three-page essays-will make an original and signifi­ cant contribution not only to the study of his work but also to the study of the history of ideas and artistic practices more generally. If the present book indeed accomplishes this, it may be due in part, as Jameson points out, to the way the texts herein involve the reader in a manner unlike the conventional scholarly tome, inviting them 'to live a moment inside one of Godard's thoughts' . To facilitate this involvement o n the part o f the reader, and per­ haps induce them to seek out and read a few of the more than one hundred texts discussed here, the contributors to this volume-fifty from a dozen countries-have adopted a number of practical means to present, analyse and document the intellectual and artistic pro­ cesses by which Jean-Luc Godard has read, conveyed, depicted and transmuted textual materials in his work.

X II

Reading w ith Jean -Luc Godard

There follows below, therefore, a brief guide to the architec­ ture of the volume and of the individual entries, and to the extensive documentary material provided at the back of the book. Entry headers and footers Back-of-book Table of Entries The 1 09 entries in the present volume are arranged alphabetically by author, with the title of the principal work under discussion at the head of each entry. In every case, the title shown in the entry header appears in English, whether the work was written in or has ever been translated into that language. This title is thus either that under which the work has been published in English (or by which it is generally known by English speakers), or a title assigned to it for the purposes of the present volume (because no translation exists or because the existing translation has not been adopted). At the foot of this first page of each three-page entry, informa­ tion is given about the text's initial publication: the name of any co­ author; its title in the language of this original publication; its place of publication, publisher and year; and, in the case of periodical pub­ lication, the issue number(s), date(s) and, except in the case of serial publication, the page range. Unless noted otherwise in the body of the entry, there is no claim that the edition named in the footer of the entry is that read by Jean-Luc Godard. The language of the work's original publication as shown in the footer is generally but not always the language in which it was composed (circumstances may have led the work to be published initially in a language other than that of its composition) . Here and throughout the volume titles in Arabic, Chinese and Russian have been Romanised. At the back of the book, beginning on p. 3 3 7, can be found a Table of Entries comprised of the author's name and date of birth and death, the published or assigned English title of the work, the date of original publication and the contributor's name. While the work is identified in the Table of Entries by the (sometimes abbrevi­ ated) English tide found in the entry, the date of publication shown in this Table is not necessarily that of the first English edition, but rather that of its first edition in any language, as shown in the footer of the entry as described above.

A N O T E O N T H E T EXT

X I II

In some cases the 'original edition', whether definitive or pro­ visional, may have appeared under a different title from the work's title today; here the date of the original is assigned to the later title. End-of-entry editions of the principal work Back-of-book table of Principal Sources At the end of each entry there appears abbreviated bibliographical information for editions of the text that is the subject of the entry and for supplementary texts consulted in the preparation of the entry. This information refers the reader to corresponding back-of-book tables of Principal Sources and Works Consulted respectively. The supplementary sources and table of Works Consulted are discussed in the section below. In the case of the text that is the subject of the entry, and the corresponding back-of-book table of Principal Sources, at the top of this end-of-entry list can be found up to three abbreviated bibliographic entries (author, title and date of publication), in the following order: a modern English-language edition; a modern foreign-language edition, if the principal text dis­ cussed in the entry was written in a language other than French or English; and a modern French-language edition. These end-of-entry modern editions are provided in part to rec­ ommend to the reader reliable and generally easily-found modern or recent editions of the principal work. The editions shown have been carefully chosen, weighing editorial quality, scholarly appara­ tus and, in particular, translation quality against availability for pur­ chase or in libraries. In some cases, given the plethora of inexpensive print and electronic editions and translations of 'classic' works in the public domain, a more scholarly (and generally quite expensive) 'complete works' edition of the text in question is referenced. Such editions are usually accompanied by extensive helpful annotations, leaving readers the choice of borrowing this edition from a library or of borrowing or purchasing one of the many less expensive editions. No text published solely in an electronic edition is included in this list of recommended editions, as these are often of dubious quality, unless published by a quality publisher, when they are generally accompanied by a bound edition. These recommended end-of-entry modern editions return, along with the original edition found in the entry's footer, in the

X IV

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

table of Principal Sources at the back of the book, beginning on p. 34 7. Here can be found complete bibliographical information for each edition, some of which was omitted from the end-of-entry informa­ tion for reasons of space. In the case of translated texts, following the translator's name is found in brackets the original publication date of the recommended translation cited (note that this is not necessarily the date of the first translation of the text). End-of-entry list of sources referenced Back-of-book list of Works Consulted Following the list of modern editions of the principal text at the end of the entry can be found abbreviated bibliographical information for works consulted by the contributor in the course of preparing the entry, including additional texts by the author of the entry's principal text. This list in no way constitutes a general bibliography on the principal text or on the topics discussed in the entry, but rather pro­ vides only the sources of quotations or of ideas borrowed in writing the entry. General factual information in the entry is not documented in this manner. As with editions of the principal work and the corresponding table of Principal Sources, this abbreviated bibliographical informa­ tion for secondary sources is amplified in a table of Works Con­ sulted beginning on p. 3 6 3 at the back of the book, in which every work consulted by the book's contributors collectively is compiled by author, providing full bibliographical information for the edition consulted. Items in the table of Works Consulted, in the case of a later edition of a text, include in brackets the date of original publication. In the case of a translation, a date in angle brackets indicates the date of the original foreign-language edition. The Body of the Entry The first time the title of the entry's principal text appears in the body of the entry it is named in the language of its original publica­ tion; thereafter it is referred to by an English title, either that under which it has been published or is generally known, or that assigned to it for this volume.

A N O T E O N T H E T EXT

xv

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from the principal text are taken from the end-of-entry modern English edition appearing in the list discussed above, or from the original edition of the princi­ pal text found in the footer, if this edition is in English and no such modern English edition is indicated at the end of the entry. If the principal text in the first-page footer is not in English and there is no modern English edition listed at the end of the entry, quotations of the principal text are taken from and attributed in the entry to the modern or, failing that, original foreign-language edition indicated. The titles of films and videos by Jean-Luc Godard are given in French only. With a few exceptions, dictated by the contributor's discussion in the entry, the titles of films, books, articles, paintings, songs etc. by anyone other than Godard are given in English only, once again whether ever published in English or not. (Journal titles and book series are given in the original language.) If quoted, and if no English translation exists, these sources are listed at the end of the entry by their original title. The date of publication will match that of the English title given in the body of the entry. The date accompanying works mentioned in the entries, with a few noted exceptions, is that of the work's publication or release, not its creation. Going against widespread practice, in the case of God­ ard's Histoire(s) du cinema and its various chapters, some of which were screened just once at a single venue in an incomplete or imper­ manent state long before their completion and final release, only the date of completion and wide release of a final or near-final version is indicated in the entry-not the years spent working on a chapter or on the entire project, or the date Godard screened an unfinished version of a chapter once to a limited audience. For works with a delayed release date due to other reasons, such as the censorship of Sierra de Teruel!Espoir (19 3 9/45) and Le Petit Soldat (1960/6 3 ), both the completion and release dates are provided, as shown here. Within each entry, other entries in the volume are cross-refer­ enced by the use of S MALL CAPITALS when the name of an author with an entry in the book is mentioned. When an entry mentions not just the name of an author found elsewhere in the book but also the title of the principal text discussed in the entry about the author, the title of this work, and not the author's name, is placed in small capitals, with the name of the author appearing in close proximity to indicate where the entry can be found in the volume.

XVI

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Quoting Jean-Luc Godard

Quoting Jean-Luc Godard's appropriations of his textual sources is a delicate task; in addition to his habitual alteration of the texts appearing in his films and writings, we often find Godard reading French translations of works written in English or other languages, while many of the present volume's contributors are seen to be read­ ing English translations of French or other foreign-language works read (or written) by Godard. Generally, entries in the pres�nt volume quote (and provide a bibliographical reference to) the original textual work used (and often modified) by Godard, or a translation of it, and not any verbatim rendering of Godard's altered version. If the text is verse, backslashes indicate the original format. In this way the reader has access to both the source manipulated by Godard and, in his film, the version presented to his audience. When for some editorial reason Godard's altered version is quoted in place of the literary source, this is noted and a page reference to the original source provided. The volume's contributors have occasionally found themselves at the mercy of unfaithful published English translations of the original source. If the problem is minor, the quotation is tweaked slightly, with mention of this fact. Wholly inadequate published English translations are not used, but may be mentioned in the entry or listed in one of the volume's bibliographical tables. Situations arise, however, where a part of a translated text used in one entry is faith­ ful to the original but another part used in another entry is not. In such cases the published English translation is used in an entry when deemed faithful, and the relevant part of the original of the same text is translated expressly for the other entry. In the case of Histoire(s) du cinema and a half-dozen other God­ ard films, published volumes provide transcriptions, in French, of the dialogue and Godard's spoken commentary, along with a partial body of images with superimposed 'intertitles' in Histoire(s) . When referencing quotations in these films, page references for the liter­ ary source are given first, followed by the corresponding page ref­ erence for the volume under Godard's name. Backslashes are used to indicate lines of type in published transcriptions, while vertical bars parse intertitles as they traverse a series of images.

A N O T E O N T H E T EXT

XVII

BLOCK CAPITALS are used to translate and quote Godard's

block-capital intertitles superimposed on the images in Histoire(s) du cinema and a couple of other films, translating from the book of the film when one exists and the intertitle appears in it, or reading off the screen when no such published source exists. As a rule, English subtitles appearing in Godard's films are not used to render anything-quotations, dialogue, voice-over com­ mentary, intertitles-heard or seen in the film. When such material is quoted, a new translation of the French is provided instead. Index of Works by Jean-Luc Godard An Index of Works by Jean-Luc Godard appears at the back of the book, beginning on p. 3 8 1 . This index provides the title of the work; any shared directing credit; in the case of a sketch the name of the omnibus film in which the work by Jean-Luc Godard appears; the country or countries of production (not to be confused with where the film was shot); the year of release; and the medium. Texts written by Godard appear not here but in the list of Works Consulted, with a couple of exceptions deemed more artistic than literary in nature. Commonly used English titles are provided for many but not all of the works by Jean-Luc Godard referenced in the present volume. These have been adopted for the most part from Richard Brody's biography Everything is Cinema. French titles whose meaning is self evident (e.g. Masculin Feminin) are assigned no English title in the Index. English titles in circulation which do not deserve to be re­ tained (e.g. Crazy Pete for Pierrot leJou) are not indicated. No English titles are attributed to the chapters of Histoire (s) du cinema. Film Title Index A Film Title Index of every film mentioned in the book, except those by Jean-Luc Godard, begins on p. 3 89. Apart from those films com­ monly known by their foreign language title (e.g. La Grande Illusion), films in this index are listed by English-language title with the origi­ nal title in brackets. The last name of the film's director is provided. The date of the film's release is not provided in the index, but is found when the film is mentioned in an entry.

XVIII

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Title Index

A title index, beginning on p. 3 9 3 , lists the titles of all publications and artworks-books, articles, journals, newspapers, poems, songs, paintings, television programs-referenced in the book, identified as above by the last name of the author or, if the work is not a book or article, a one-word description of its medium. The publication date is not provided in the index, but is given when the work is mentioned in an entry. S MALL CAP ITALS indicate the title of a work which is the subject of an entry in the volume, and italics indicate the page numbers of such entries. In the Title Index, as mentioned above, every title is indexed by its published or assigned English title, with its original title given in brackets. If a work is quoted in an entry, the original-language edition, matching that found in the end-of-entry list of sources, is cross-referenced in the Title Index. Name Index A Name Index beginning on p. 405 lists the names of every indi­ vidual named in the book, except Jean-Luc Godard. Pseudonyms or former names are cross-referenced to the name by which a given individual is known today, even when the work was authored under a different name. Co-authors of texts to which an entry is devoted are cross-referenced to the name of the principal author to whom the work is credited. S MALL CAP ITALS indicate an author with an entry in the volume, and italics indicate the page numbers of such entries. The two essays by Fredric Jameson are not indexed. Table of Contributors A Table of Contributors beginning on p. 4 2 r completes the volume, providing the contributor's institutional affiliation and the page number(s) of the entry or entries of which he or she is the author. This Table is followed by brief bio-bibliographies of the volume's editors and of the author of its Preface and Coda.

Jean-Luc Godard passed away in September 2022, when the present volume had been laid out and proofs of the individual entries had been approved by their authors, and when the proofing and indexing of the whole by the editors was underway. It was decided at that time not to go through the entire volume and modify the countless references to its subj ect in order to speak of him in the past tense.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

My name is Paul Godard. [Laughter] You have shown us this morning three or four pieces of films for us to get to know Jean-Luc Godard, your thoughts around Alphaville. Thank you for the films; now for books: can you do the same for books? Can you indicate, you have a literary culture, a great artistic culture, you should be able, you have all these things in mind when you make your films. You have shown us a few sections of films, can you do the same thing by indicating to us a few titles of books, a few paintings or sculptures perhaps? PAUL G O DARD :

No, I won't do that for you with books, which are beginning to be my enemies. It's true I was raised, I had an in­ tellectual upbringing. I was raised in the cultured bourgeoisie. And what strikes me about this film is the way I used this entire culture, which I sifted through in my own manner and which today I no longer really have. So for books, or paintings, no, you have to ask other people. Besides it's been quite well done, it's been done quite often in a number of books. But it hasn't been done visually, precisely, so it isn't very interesting to me. Besides I don't understand very well what you would like to know.

JEAN-LUC G ODARD :

PAUL G O DARD : Jean-Luc

Godard's bibliography around a work . . .

Yes, but what we are doing here has no-I have no interest, my only interest is in seeing pieces of films and in trying to see a connecting thread, like a film, a musical theme. But we can only find this thread if we assemble the right instruments, capable of producing certain notes for a certain period of time, and the people to produce them. At that point we may discover a kind of music and express something that happened or that we wish to happen.

JEAN-LUC G ODARD :

Montreal, 1978

HENRI ALLEG The Question of the Algerian War (1954-62) coincides with that of the birth and efflorescence of the Nouvelle Vague, this polarising incident for French society left few traces on the films of the movement. The most notable ex­ ception is undoubtedly Jean-Luc Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1960/6 3 ), which dared to bring up the issue of torture in the Algerian war and was consequently banned for three years in France. Henri Alleg's La Question is one of the key sources of inspiration for the film. Alleg was a French-Algerian j ournalist, a member of the French Com­ munist Party and a director of the daily newspaper Alger republicain, which was banned in September 195 5 , ten months after the war in Algeria started. The following year, the authorities interned most of the newspaper's personnel. Alleg, who went underground, was finally arrested on 12 June 195 7 by paratroopers at the home of his friend Maurice Audin, a young mathematician and militant anti-colonialist who had been arrested the previous day. Alleg was confined at the El-Biar detention centre for an entire month. The Question is the story of Alleg's detention. The book became a bestseller when it was published by E ditions de Minuit in mid­ February 195 8 before being banned in late March. It revealed to contemporary readers the habitual use of torture during the Algerian war, something everyone knew but no one talked about. The de­ tailed description by the victim himself of every kind of interrogation technique-burns, dehydration, physical blows, injections of sodium pentothal, threats, electric shock, water torture-was especially up­ setting. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE reviewed the book for L'Express; his text, itself banned in France, is used by John Calder as the introduction to his English translation. Sartre summed up the experience of reading Alleg's book: 'the reader identifies himself with him passionately, he accompanies him to the extremity of his suffering; with him, alone and naked, he does not give way' (p. xxxi ). Though subjected to agonising torture, Alleg not only refused to name his collaborators; he also calmly observed how the torture factory worked and vividly recorded the words of his torturers. The episode of a young blond guard with a northern France accent is

A

LTHOUGH THE PERIOD

La Question. Paris: Minuit, 1 95 8 .

6

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

striking: after witnessing torture sessions during which Alleg said nothing, he congratulated him 'without spite as he would a cham­ pion cyclist'; several days later, however, the blond Frenchman, 'dis­ figured by hatred', beat a Muslim man without hesitation. As Sartre comments, the torturers were not inherently sadistic: 'torture makes torturers' (p. xxxiv). The influence of Alleg's book on Le Petit Soldat is particularly remarkable in the scene in which Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), a deserter and member without conviction of an extreme right-wing terrorist group fighting against Algerian independence, is kidnapped by agents from the Front de Liberation National (FLN) and sub­ jected to torture-'monotonous and sad', Bruno describes it in his monologue-in the bathroom of an ordinary apartment. In this long, nightmarish scene lasting some fifteen minutes, one of the Arab agents (Laszlo Szab6) remarks that the French also torture. Holding a copy of The Question, he reads a passage, although the quotation is too fragmentary and elliptical to get a clear sense of it. This scene, in which we witness torture by water, burning and electroshock, could nevertheless pass for the cinematic adaptation of some of the scenes described in The Question . The book also finds an echo in a scene in Pierrot leJou (1965), in which gangsters subject Ferdinand Gean-Paul Belmondo) to water torture in an apartment bathroom. Whereas The Question denounced the use of torture by French paratroopers against those in favour of Algerian independence, Le Petit Soldat provocatively reverses the situation, making the Arabs, not the French, into torturers. Although Godard would later invoke, in the credit sequence of Masculin Fiminin: 15 faits pricis (1966), the 'Manifesto of the l 2 l ', published just as Le Petit Soldat was being banned in France and signed by leading French intellectual figures in opposition to French policy in Algeria, and ask Francis Jeanson, leader of the underground Jeanson network in support of Algerian independence, to appear in La Chinoise (1967), at the time of Le Petit Soldat he was considered right-wing. Unlike FRAN, 1 999· Jean-Luc Godard. Take Your Own Tours < 1 959>, l 986r.

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Hubert Knapp. Jean-Luc Godard ou Le cinema au di.ft (film) , 1 96 5 .

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ROBERT ARDREY The Territorial Imperative Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Impera­ tive: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations contribute to the numerous cultural references in Week-end ( 1 967), Jean-Luc Godard's anarchic tour de force. Ardrey makes his cameo appearance on Godard's stage when the two main representatives of his visionary display of this hellish weekend, Corinne (Mireille Dare) and Roland Gean Yanne), concoct a plan to kill Corinne's mother and seize the inheritance from her dead father. Roland reads to Corinne from a book which, he says, some­ one had lent him. Although Week-end neither displays nor identifies the book, the text Roland reads comes from the French translation of The Territorial Imperative. Ardrey draws examples from a variety of birds, fish and mammals to demonstrate the similarities between human and animal behaviour. The attachment to territory, he argues, is one of the most primal instincts. Though aggressive, the behaviour generated by our territorial instincts ultimately enables us to survive and co-exist. Roland reads Ardrey to Corinne while she is taking a bath and rationalising her mother's murder as the appropriate course of action for securing her late father's assets. The passages Roland reads stem from Ardrey's discussion of the hippopotamus, whose body Ardrey likens to a 'gigantic bathtub' and heralds as 'the idealised synthesis of all things ugly' (p. 1 65). Ardrey presents an account of the hippopotamus' bargain with the Lord of the Animals: in exchange for not eating fish, he will be allowed to live in the water. Roland reads to Corinne the following excerpt: 'If you will let me live in the water, then whenever I have a bowel move­ ment I shall spread it around with my little flipping tail, and you can see for yourself that there are no fish bones' (p. 1 64). It might seem simple to draw connections between Ardrey's fable of the hippopota­ mus and Godard's visual attention to Corinne as the 'ugly' epitome of inhumanity as she bathes in the metaphorical and, soon, literal blood of her mother, but Godard's inclusion of Ardrey's book at this point in the film nevertheless demands a more complex answer to the question: how far will human animals go to designate territory?

Q

UOTATIONS FROM

The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations. New York: Athenaeum, 1 966.

l2

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

Although The Territorial Imperative was a new book at the time of Week-end's release, Godard nevertheless added Ardrey's work to the 'collection' of materials he assembled for the film. Regardless of whether he was anticipating an audience also fascinated by The Terri­ torial Imperative or, at least, familiar enough with Ardrey to recognise the film's treatment of territory, his use of the book as a significant element reflects his acquaintance with and interest in Ardrey's work. Godard was not the only major filmmaker during the 1 960s and 70s to draw from Ardrey's direct comparison between animal and human behaviour. Sam Peckinpah referenced Ardrey's work during inter­ views conducted before and after the 1 9 7 1 release of his disturbingly violent film Straw Dogs, praising Ardrey's concept of animals' fight for territory as indicative of human patterns of behaviour. In 1 9 7 2 Peckinpah told one interviewer: 'Ardrey's the only prophet alive today' (p. 1 03). As Kevin ]. Hayes suggests, the cinema of Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick also reflects their familiarity with Ardrey (pp. xi-xii). The Territorial Imperative, which Ardrey positions as an inquiry into 'the implications of territory in our estimates of man', takes into account the territorial behaviour of animals in an effort to un­ derstand the ways in which observations of the animal kingdom might reveal the processes by which humans likewise claim terri­ tory through animalistic behaviour (p. 4). Though not a scientific or empirical account, The Territorial Imperative discusses territorial acquisition as the driving force behind the attempt of any creature to 'gain and defend an exclusive property' (p. 3). In Week-end, any such difference between human and animal becomes almost indis­ tinguishable as Godard's characters stake their various kinds of terri­ tory. Whether they are fighting for territorial rights to money, food or sexual gratification, all the characters engage in behaviour repre­ sentative of animals on a lower evolutionary scale. Presenting an on-screen version of Ardrey's comparison of hu­ man behaviour to animal behaviour, Godard equates human blood with animal blood (as in the case of Corinne's mother's blood drip­ ping over the carcass of a rabbit). In addition, he presents cannibals as merely animals hunting for live prey and even blurs the lines between human and animal intercourse when a fish serves in place of the phallus during a scene depicting vaginal penetration. Without identifying Godard's source, David Sterritt observes one effect of

R OB E RT A R D R E Y

the passage from Ardrey: 'The quotation suggests a nightmarish reversal of romantic notions (the felicities of nature, the bounties of physical beauty) that have crept into otherwise tough-minded Godard films like Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965) and Masculin Feminin ( 1 966)' (p. 1 1 9). Roland's recitation of the hippopotamus' bowel movements dur­ ing the bathtub scene in the film originates from Ardrey's discus­ sion of privacy, a notion that at first appears contrary to many of the scenes depicted in the film, such as apparent rape, public urination and Corinne's verbal account of her sex orgy with another man and woman, adapted from Georges Bataille's STORY OF THE EY E ( 1 9 2 8). Tearing away any curtain of privacy separating the characters from one another, much less separating the screen from the viewer, the film seems rather to reject privacy altogether. It is important to note, however, that Ardrey's mention of the hippopotamus extends his claim that a society using 'togetherness' as a fac.;ade to hide the true desire for privacy is in actuality evidence of the 'improbable realisation of the fleeting American dream' (p. 1 63). According to Ardrey, the idea of the American dream, which claims to obtain territory through unity, masks the ongoing fight for terri­ torial domination. This domination can be achieved solely through exclusion. Truly obtaining such a 'dream' through the sense of com­ munity that it purports would require humans to defecate publicly as the hippopotamus does, thereby forsaking privacy entirely, and it is Godard who visualises what would happen if humans decided to spread their fecal matter around for all the world to see: the private would become public, and the thin veil separating the dangerous dream from an even more dangerous nightmare of reality would re­ main forever rent in two. Makenna Green Robert Ardrey. Le Territoire: Enquete personnelle sur les origines animales de la

propriete et des nations, l 966. Kevin ]. Hayes, ed. Sam Peckinpah: Interviews, 2008. William Murray. Playboy Interview: Sam Peckinpah ( 1 972), 2008. David Sterritt. The Films ofJean-Luc Godard, 1 999·

HANNAH ARENDT Eichmann in Jerusalem a German-Jewish philosopher and po­ litical theorist who studied under MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Karl Jaspers and Edmund Husserl, fled Germany in 19 3 3 · After residing in Paris for eight years, she moved to the United States in 1941, where she remained until her death in New York in 1975· Eichmann in Jerusalem is an account of the 1961 show trial of Adolf Eichmann, Head of Jewish Affairs in the Third Reich and a key figure in the orchestration of the Holocaust. After its publication in The New Yorker in instalments in 196 3 it appeared in book form the same year with the subtitle A Report on the Banality ofEvil. Eichmann in Jerusalem has been a misunderstood work since its publication. A key misconception arises from its subtitle, chosen by Arendt to assert that the Holocaust was not a diabolical, inhuman visitation of despicable activities but rather acts that were knowingly committed by ordinary men and women in a systematic process that, in its routine aspect, seemed almost banal. The title, however, has long been misinterpreted as belittling the full atrocity of the Holocaust by portraying Eichmann and other functionaries as merely carrying out their duties without being fully conscious of the enormity of their actions. The term in fact had its origins in a letter from Karl Jaspers, who cautioned Arendt not to construct the Nazis' deeds into a 'satanic greatness' or, in other words, not to divorce evil from humanity: 'we have to see these things in their total banality, in their prosaic trivi­ ality. . . . I regard any hint of myth and legend with horror' (p. 62). In an August 196 3 Cahiers du Cinema article, Jean-Luc Godard asserts that a true history of the concentration camps is not possi­ ble unless one considers the daily routine of the torturers and other workers in the camp as they went about the macabre business of exterminating and disposing of countless human bodies. He adds that 'the really horrible thing about such scenes would not be their horror but their very ordinary everydayness' (1986L, p. 198). These opinions, an early example of Godard's long-term effort to establish cinema's responsibility in relation to the concentration camps, which reaches its apogee in Histoire(s) du cinema (1989-98), seem to reflect

H

ANNAH ARENDT,

Eichmann in Jerusalem. The New Yorker, 1 6 & 2 3 February, 2 , 9 & 1 6 March 1 96 3 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Arendt's views first put forward in February of that year. Arendt has continued to act as a touchstone throughout God­ ard's work, whether visually or verbally: her image appears in a se­ quence of female thinkers in Chapter 4A, 'Le Contr6le de l'univers' ( 1 998) of Histoire(s) du cinema; she is mentioned briefly, in tandem with S I M ONE WEIL, in Eloge de !'amour (200 1 ) ; she is referenced and depicted in Notre Musique (2 004), in which the French ambassador to Saraj evo (Simon Eine) compares Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler) to Arendt, whose photo hangs beside Franz Kafka's in the embassy, and suggests that Lerner read Arendt's 'articles from the 1 950s'; and she is quoted in Film Socialisme (2 0 1 0), as discussed below. Similarly to Arendt, Godard has been harshly criticised for his interpretation of the Holocaust, particularly for his application of the correspondences that are a hallmark of his thinking and films to Judaism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, in Notre Musique he describes Jews as fiction and Palestinians as documen­ tary; links the Shoah to the Palestinian Nabka; and portrays the relationship between the two groups as a cinematic shot-reverse shot. A 2 004 radio conversation with Stephane Zagdanski demon­ strates how both Godard's and Arendt's respective positions have been misunderstood. Jean-Luc Douin and many others report that Godard, misrepresenting Arendt's position, states in the interview 'even Hannah Arendt criticises the Jews for allowing themselves to be herded like sheep. I've started to believe that they are the ones who saved Israel. They were six million kamikaze fighters' (20 1 0, p. 2 9 1 ) . As Maurice Darmon notes, however, in the original broadcast Godard actually said: 'even Hannah Arendt is very critical of . . . the idea that "the Jews allowed themselves be herded like sheep . . . even the Judenrate"' (p. 88), indicating that he is well aware that Arendt does not make any claim for passive culpability on the part of Hol­ ocaust victims. In fact, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt critiques this claim, put forward by then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben­ Gurion, whom she describes as contrasting Israeli heroism and Jew­ ish submissive weakness in presenting the argument that the Jewish people 'went to their death like sheep, and how only the establish­ ment of a Jewish state had enabled Jews to hit back' (p. IO) . Arendt does contend, however, contrary to Godard's assertion, that if the Judenrate (Jewish Councils) had not cooperated with the Nazis, 'there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people' (p. l 2 5). This statement led critics to claim that she was absolving Eichmann and blaming the victims. The poet Gershom Scholem (whose work Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [ 1 94 1 ] forms the basis of the opening lines of Helas pour moi [ 1 993]), accused her of lacking Ahavat Israel, or love of the Jew­ ish people ( 2 006, p. xxi). In her reply, Arendt told Scholem: 'You are quite right-I am not moved by any "love" of this sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life "loved" any people . . . . I indeed love "only" my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons' ( 2 007, pp. 466-67). The paraphrasing of this excerpt in Film Socialisme (p. r n), which Junji Hori interprets as the director locating himself 'in the gap between several identities and out of any ordinary identity politics' (p. 75), may perhaps thus be seen as Godard using the words that Arendt employed in her own defence as a rebuttal of the accusations of anti-Semitism that he has faced. In a 2 0 1 0 interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zei­ tung, Godard explained what he meant when he described himself as a 'Jew of cinema': 'I want to be with everyone, but remain solitary. I wanted to express this contradiction' ( 2 o r nc; translation modified slightly). Arendt's exile-from Germany because of her Jewishness and from her fellow Jews as a result of her decision to present a dis­ passionate account of a highly emotive trial-doubtlessly appeals to Godard, who has always felt himself an exile in the cinema. Indeed, when asked in the interview quoted above where he sees himself in the history of cinema, he answered succinctly 'next door'. Jill Murphy Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 2 006.

. Eichmann a Jerusalem, l 997. --- . The Jewish Writings, 2007. Hannah Arendt & Karl Jaspers. Correspondence 1 926-1969 < 1 98p, 1 99 2 . Maurice Darmon. La Question juive de Jean-Luc Godard, 2 0 1 l . Jean-Luc Douin. Jean-Luc Godard: Dictionnaire des passions, 2 0 1 0. Jean-Luc Godard. Les Carabiniers under Fire < 1 96p, l 986L. . Everything or Nothing #1 , 2 0 1 oc. . Film Socialisme, 2 0 1 00. Jean-Luc Godard & Stephane Zagdanski. Cinema et Litterature , 2 004. Junji Hori. Godard , Spielberg, the Muselmann and the Concentration Camps , 2 0 1 4. ---

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RAY M OND ARON 18

Lectures on Industrial Society

EAN-LUC GODARD's

film Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1967) contains several extreme close-ups of the front covers of paperback books in the !dies series published by Gallimard. The first one appears prior to an early sequence depicting Robert Jeanson (Roger Montsoret) and his wife Juliette (Marina Vlady), who live in one of the new suburban housing projects: 'dix-huit lec;ons sur la societe industrielle'. Understood in relation to the ensuing sequence, these words suggest that the promised lessons will come in the form of exempla depicting how people in modern society live. The words come from the cover of Raymond Aron's renowned socio-economic treatise Dix-huit lefons sur la sociiti industrielle. God­ ard publicly acknowledged his debt to Aron, asserting that his film 'endeavours to present one or two lessons on industrial society' (1966, p. 4). Aron appealed to Godard in terms of literary style, as well. David Rubinstein called him a 'master of the brilliant observa­ tion and the appropriate phrase' (p. 1 0) . Based on lectures Aron delivered at the Sorbonne in 195 5-56, first published in French in 1962 and translated into English in 1967, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society initiated debate about what consti­ tutes industrial society and how best to regulate it. Aron acknowl­ edged his intellectual debt to Tocqueville and Montesquieu, but his concentration on industrial society breaks new ground. According to Aron, the emphasis that industrial society places on productivity and its application of science and technology to foster growth distinguish it from all previous societal forms. Industrial society is not beholden to any particular ideology. It can exist under capitalism or Marx­ ism. Aron avoids choosing between ideologies. Instead of taking sides and concluding that one could foster economic growth better than another, he questions the overall value of economic growth as a necessary goal. Deux ou trois choses, while it shares some of Aron's ideas, is more polemical than the book. Although Godard refrains from offering an alternative, there is little question that the film indicts the burgeon­ ing consumer culture that industrial society has encouraged. Godard exposes the willingness of people to prostitute themselves in order

J

Dix-huit lefons sur la sociiti industrielle. Paris: Gallimard, 1 96 2 .

18

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

to acquire the latest and most fashionable material possessions. The ideas Godard conveys in Deux ou trois choses reveal his receptivity to the Marxist-Leninist notions he would embrace in the coming years. Extreme close-ups of the covers of other books in Gallimard's !dies series link them to Aron's 1 8 Lectures. Not all th e book-cover close-ups portray their complete titles, but the words they display form comments on the images they accompany. Julia Lesage calls these verbal inserts 'BREC HTIAN footnotes' : they both gloss the char­ acter's actions, yet create distance from them, forcing viewers to consider the visual images in relation to the written text (p. 78). The present author has used a more neutral term, calling them 'inter­ titles' after the written title cards in silent film ( 2 000A). This term jibes with Godard's thinking. In his Montreal lectures the follow­ ing decade, he would critique the use of intertitles in The Passion of Joan ofArc ( 1 9 2 8), arguing that Carl Theodor Dreyer failed to see intertitles as images (20 14, p. l 1 3). Godard's intertitles in Deux ou trois choses anticipate his Mon­ treal remarks. He recognised how he could use the cover graphics of the !dies series as a visual element in his film. Each intertitle is similar because the books share similar graphics. Most of the book covers display abstract designs in blue and black with the contrast­ ing title words in white or yellow. Godard's use of the publisher's graphics accomplishes much. At one level they represent a kind of found art; the graphics are a visual element tying together the words and the ideas they express in Deux ou trois choses. Godard's display of the cover graphics also emphasises their commercial nature. Book­ cover graphics are marketing tools. Establishing continuity among the books in a series, their graphics let them sell one another by association. Even as Godard shows that Aron and the other authors in the !dies series influenced his thinking, he reminds us that these ideas occur in writings that made it into print solely because a pub­ lisher saw their economic potential as commercial products. In the final chapter of 1 8 Lectures, Aron draws some tentative conclusions, but he leaves many questions unanswered. Some read­ ers found Aron's hesitancy disappointing, but he promised a sequel to address the most pressing concerns. The next book-cover intertitle in Deux ou trois choses displays the following words: 'de classes nou­ velles les;ons sur les societes industrielles' . These words come from the cover of Aron's sequel: La Lutte de classes: Nouvelles lefons sur les

RAY M O N D A R O N

societes industrielles. Cutting o ff the first two words-'la lutte'-Godard omits the struggle. In so doing, he confirms ideas contained within Aron's book, which generally argues that the history of modern society is no longer one of class struggles, but the story of a general escalation towards high mass consumption. Instead of struggling, Godard implies, people in modern society accept their station with lethargic indifference and succumb to a world controlled by material impulses. Cutting 'la lutte' would become unthinkable for Godard over the next few years during which he would embrace MAO I S M , a doctrine emphasising the importance of understanding how the class struggle affects all aspects of human existence. Having cut the words from Deux ou trois choses, Godard would soon restore them. The main title of Aron's sequel forms an intertitle to describe a crash between a sports car and a farm tractor in Week-end ( 1 967): THE CLASS STRUGGLE.

Kevin ]. Hayes Raymond Aron. 1 8 Lectures on Industrial Society, l 967. Jean-Luc Godard. One or Two Things, 1 966. ---

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

Kevin ]. Hayes. Bookcover as Intertitle in the Cinema of]ean-Luc Godard,

2000A. Julia Lesage . Jean Luc Godard, 1 979. -

David Rubinstein. Ideology and Industry, 1 967.

ALAI N BADI OU Number and Numbers

EAN-LUC GODARD' S REFRAIN

over the years is: the cinema is made for thinking. For him, cinema's primary form of thought is what he calls the image which, as Mi chael Witt convinc­ ingly shows (pp. 1 9-3 2), is quite close to metaphor: an association established through montage. Yet in recent years Godard seems to have found a counterpart from a foreign land, that of thinking with words, in French philosopher Alain Badiou. It can hardly be said that Badiou had any significant influence on Godard, or that God­ ard fully approves of his work, which he inevitably sees as 'a bit too literary' (20 1 0A). But he needs this connection for some reason: no other contemporary author is present in his digital period as consist­ ently as Badiou. Since Film Socialisme (2 0 1 0) he appears in all three of Godard's features and in his short sketch Les Trois Desastres (201 3). There is no recurrent quotation or privileged book by Badiou in Godard's films; it seems it is the living presence of thought that matters. B adiou is introduced into Godard's 2 0 1 0s universe through his in-person appearance in Film Socialisme, not to recite a quotation, but to give a lecture on a subject proposed by the director: 'Geometry as Origin' . One can argue, however, that Godard is less interested in the thought he initiated than in demonstrating its destiny within consumer society, represented by the passengers of the Costa Concordia liner; in the film he reduces the lecture to some thirty seconds, taking care to show that Badiou was speaking in front of nobody. Known as a political thinker, notably for his adherence to the communist idea, Badiou was not an unexpected choice for Film Socialisme. He shares with Godard a highly critical attitude towards capitalist representative democracy and the state. In the late 1 960s, each engaged with MAO I S M and it was then that Godard first turned to Badiou, quoting from his essay 'The Autonomy of the Aesthetic Process' ( 1 965) in La Chinoise ( 1 967). High-level mathematics also has a great role in Badiou's thinking. Godard, for whom mathematics is an important source of metaphor, took the opportunity to question Badiou on the subject. It is therefore not surprising that Les Trois Desastres contains numerous quotations from one of the most math­ ematical works of Badiou, Le Nombre et les nombres.

J

Le Nombre et les nombres. Paris: Seuil, 1 990.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

2l

This dense text requiring special knowledge sees its main task as producing a definition of number which would overcome the partial nature of all existing definitions. But in the introduction, Badiou re­ veals the political intention behind it: given the fact that in today's world the number defines all aspects of our life, from politics and eco­ nomics to our 'soul', we need a relevant idea of number which would release us from 'the blind despotism of the numerical unthought' . This aspect interests Godard most. In the film, he quotes the follow­ ing passage: 'In our situation, that of Capital . . . number operates as that obscure point where the situation concentrates its law; obscure through its being at once sovereign and subtracted from all thought, and even from every investigation that orients itself towards some truth' (p. 2 l 3). Godard projects this onto his domain: making his first film in 3 D, he turns it into reflection on the 'unthought' of the medium itself: its pursuit of spatial representation, making directors neglect time or, more precisely, historical memory, considered by Godard as an important condition of thinking in images. The case ofAdieu au langage (2 0 1 4) is in a sense the opposite: here Godard quotes one of Badiou's most accessible and overtly political essays, The Rebirth of History (2 0 1 l ) , while seemingly depoliticising it by the very choice of excerpt and the context in which he places it. Leafing through a book of paintings by Nicolas de Stael, one of the characters in the film wonders: 'What is going on? Of what are we half-fascinated, half-devastated witnesses? The continuation, at all costs, of a weary world? The end of that world? The advent of a different world? What is happening to us in the early years of the century-something that would appear not to have any clear name in any accepted language? ' (p. l ) . In the book, the answer is twofold. From the point of view of 'our masters', that is, those who underpin the capitalist system, we are dealing with a permanent change or 'modernisation', which, as Badiou argues, has a constant direction: towards ever-growing inequality. But he also discerns an opposing phenomenon, what he calls 'the awakening of History', represented by the Arab Spring, the protest movements in the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2 0 r os. These are 'events' which introduce a break in the established order, opening up new unforeseen possi­ bilities, which will or will not be unfolded into a procedure of truth. Godard places the quotation in the film's introduction, which, like the main part, is divided into two sections: 'Nature' and 'Metaphor' .

22

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

The first examines the 'established order', drawing on historical memory, primarily in terms of Jacques Ellul's essay 'The Victory of Hitler?' ( 1 945), whereas the second, where the Badiou passage ap­ pears, is almost free of political commentary. A little further on, by linking Africa to the question of happiness as (not) a new idea (Saint­ Just), Godard only slightly alludes to Badiou's assumption that Arab Africa is taking up the revolutionary baton. Interestingly, the con­ nection between the revolution and the Arab world is much more pronounced in his next film, Le Livre d'image (2 0 1 8), which includes footage shot in Tunisia. But in Adieu au langage the question of the old/new world is associated, rather, with painting, and the main bifurcation of this section is not the capitalist world and 'historical riots', but the difference between idea and metaphor. The difference, for Godard, amounts to that between text and image, given the dual nature of the latter: visibility is certainly important in the image (a film character does not invent an example of a metaphor, but finds it with their eyes), but at the same time it cannot be reduced to the visible (the image is not a picture, as Godard has said many times), because it is an association. The visible image-association, image­ metaphor is an alternative to the established order offered by Godard. This brings us back to the lecture in Film Socialisme. We talked about the importance of Badiou's political background and the al­ legorically presented fate of thought in the 'situation of Capital' . But why geometry? In a 2 004 conversation with Jean Douchet (20 1 0), Godard points out the visible nature of geometry, as opposed to al­ gebra, thus making roughly the same distinction as between idea and metaphor. One can say that geometry, like metaphor, is on the side of the image. Hence Godard establishes a triple relationship between thought, image and politics. In doing so, he somehow makes Badiou his accomplice, bringing him into the territory of the image (as in the 'Metaphor' section of Adieu au langage), yet the distance between the two forms of thought remains insurmountable: the lecture be­ gins right after the off-screen comment 'Saying is never enough'. Dmitry Golotyuk & Antonina Derzhitskaya Alain Badiou. Number and Numbers, 2 008. ---

. The Rebirth of History, 2 0 1 2 .

Jean-Luc Godard. I I y a tres peu d e bonnes biographies, 2 0 r oA. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean Douchet. Jean-Luc Godard avec Jean Douchet, 2 0 1 0. Michael Witt. L'lmage selon Godard, 2000.

HONORE DE BALZ AC Old Goriot EAN-LUC GODARD's youthful passion for Honore de Balzac stayed with him after he came to Paris and began writing film criticism. During their time together at Cahiers du Cinema, ERIC ROHMER remembered Godard always carrying around one Balzac novel or another. Godard's early critical writings refer to A M URKY BUSINES S , Honorine, Pere Goriot and 'Study of a Woman'. When Fer­ dinand Griffon Gean-Paul Belmondo) recommends reading Cesar Birotteau in Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965), he expresses an impulse of his director. In 1 966 Godard even mounted a project to adapt a Balzac novel, The Lily of the Valley, to be produced by Anatole Dauman with Jean-Pierre Leaud and, Godard hoped, Marina Vlady starring. Though familiar with several Balzac novels, Godard makes criti­ cal use of Old Goriot more than any other. In 'Towards a Political Cinema', one of his earliest published essays, he appreciates the dual nature of Soviet director Sergei Gerasimov, the way his films pre­ sent 'a heart beating ceaselessly between the cult of the Absolute and the cult of Action'. Gerasimov, Godard imagines, told his actors he would not be happy unless he could find in them 'both Rastignac and Julien Sorel' (p. 1 6). With this suggestion, Godard mentions two major characters of French fiction. Julien Sorel is the opportunistic hero of Stendhal's The Red and the Black ( 1 8 30), Eugene de Rastignac the ambitious protagonist of Old Goriot. Many consider Old Goriot Balzac's masterpiece. Like The Red and the Black, Old Goriot is a Bildungsroman, although given its serial publi­ cation, Balzac was initially unsure how it would end. The final work, published one month after the last instalment, incorporated numer­ ous changes to the serial version. As the story begins, Rastignac has recently left the provinces for Paris, where he hopes to make his name and reputation. He lives at Madame Vauquer's, a seedy board­ ing house in the Latin Quarter. Affected by the current popularity of dioramas and panoramas, Madame Vauquer's boarders start using the suffix '-rama' in conversation. Old Goriot, a boarder who is aloof from the others, remains a mystery to them. Describing an impen­ etrable fog one day, they call it a 'Goriorama' . The behaviour of the

J

Le Pere Goriot. Revue de Paris, 1 8 December 1 8 34- 1 February 1 835.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard boarders reveals how the language of popular culture can affect the vernacular. Godard vividly remembered their play on words. Dis­ cussing a similarly named film festival celebrating the work of Abel Gance in 'Future, Present, Past: Magirama', Godard begins: 'Magi­ rama ! Rereading Le Pere Goriot, one realises that Mama Vauquer's lodgers couldn't have found a better label for the spectacle present­ ed by Abel Gance (and Nelly Kaplan) at Studio 2 8 ' (p. 4 1 ) . Godard would continue to recall the language of Mme Vauquer's boarders. Alphaville: une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965) echoes the word 'Goriorama', naming one city in the Outlands 'Tokyorama'. Determined to enter high society in Old Goriot, Rastignac must first learn how it works, how people cruelly take advantage of one another and how money functions as both crowbar and measuring stick. Goriot, whose backstory gradually emerges, has sacrificed his life and fortune to place his two daughters among the elite. Neither one appreciates what he has done for them; Rastignac alone attends Goriot's funeral at Pere Lachaise cemetery, where he challenges the city of Paris: 'it's war between us now ! ' (p. 3 09). Reporting the 1 959 Tours film festival in 'Take Your Own Tours', Godard specifically refers to Rastignac's challenge. The article is divided into sections, the first being 'A nous deux, Tours'. In that section, Godard glosses Rastignac's concept of 'going up to Paris', explaining that it has the sense of 'going up into the line of attack' (p. 1 08). Furthermore, Godard identifies a similarity between Ras­ tignac and Lucien de Rubempre, another recurring character in The Human Comedy ( 1 8 2 9-48), Balzac's collection of interrelated novels, who sees coming to Paris as preparing for battle. Sergei Eisenstein used Old Goriot to challenge his students, ask­ ing how they would stage a particular scene to understand the spatial relationships among a story's characters and to learn that the mise en scene constitutes a visual representation of the scene's social and psy­ chological content (pp. 3 9-5 2). For Godard, on the other hand, the novel is more important personally than aesthetically. He read Old Goriot as a character study of an ambitious young man who dares to challenge Paris while seeking to fulfil his ambitions. Godard closely identified with fictional characters who came to Paris to establish their reputations. Having come to Paris to make his mark in the world of cinema, Godard saw himself as a modern-day Rastignac. John Kreidl observes: 'Godard seems to equate his own struggle to

H O N O R E D E BA L Z A C

create the New Wave with Rastignac's crashing of Parisian society. At the very least he is self-conscious about how young Frenchmen of his generation like himself were repeating the same old quest for success in Paris-Rastignac being his personal simile for a young Frenchman on the make in the capital' (p. 43). In Pierrot le Jou, Ferdinand expresses disappointment that peo­ ple seem more familiar with 'Balzac' as the name of a telephone exchange than as the name of the author of The Human Comedy, but references to Balzac are more prominent in Godard's criticism than his films, and they largely disappear from his work after Pierrot le Jou and the aborted adaptation of The Lily of the Valley the following year. Godard's enthusiasm for Balzac follows a pattern established by several modernist poets before him. Hart Crane, T. s . ELIOT and EZRA POUND enthusiastically read Old Goriot and other parts of The Human Comedy as young men early in the century, a time when, as the present author has remarked, 'would-be Birroteaus and want-to­ be Rastignacs became commonplace throughout America' (p. 248). All these poets repudiated Balzac as they began their own literary careers. Like Pound, for example, Godard may have felt he had out­ grown Balzac. On the other hand, he may have had a more specific reason for distancing himself from Balzac. Godard did not necessar­ ily omit references to Balzac's writings because he enjoyed them any less but because his friend FRAN, 202 2A. Jean-Luc Godard . Le Conquerant solitaire ( 1 959), 1 998F.

--- . L'Art a partir de la vie, l 998Q. --- . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

,

ANDRE BAZ I N Decoupage 1 948 and 1 95 2 Andre Bazin wrote a handful of texts which expounded the concept of decoupage, culminating in a lengthy article entitled 'Decoupage' for a Venice film festival catalogue in 1 9 5 2 . Thereafter, references to decoupage in his work dwindled considerably. Just before his death in 1 95 8 'Decoupage' was revised and abridged (with some of his 1 9 5 l article 'Depth of Field, Once and for All' mixed in), stripping it of its title and rechris­ tening it 'The Evolution of Film Language', the most widely-read theoretical text in cinema studies, for inclusion in the first volume of What is Cinema? By then the term decoupage had fallen into disuse, having been replaced by montage, or assembly, on the one hand and mise en scene on the other. The original article was not republished in any language until the present author's translation of it in 20 l 5 . The term decoupage ('cutting up') had long existed in the French film industry, as a film's shooting script, but Bazin went a step further and defined decoupage succinctly as 'the aesthetic of the relations between shots' (202 2 c, p. 95). Or, in the words of the present author, 'if [the decoupage] is the treatment of the script for the camera, decoupage is the treatment of profilmic reality by the camera' (p. 7 7). Rather than seeing these relations as the product of a film's assembly, Bazin argued that narrative cinema's sequencing of events was, except in the case of schools of 'montage' such as that of the 1 92 0s Soviet filmmakers, the work of the director and cinema­ tographer deciding shot changes on the set. Film art, therefore, was camera-based: not in a pictorial sense, but in the sense of film 'lan­ guage' -of planning and structuring the film's shots and sequences. Bazin then took a decisive next step: if camera-based decoupage sequences narrative events, and if film art at its base consists in 'simple photographic respect for the unity of space' (202 20, p. 42 8), it makes sense to give the camera full freedom to organise the narrative action, within the frame and with a minimum of shot changes. Hence Bazin's privileged aesthetic device, the 'plan-sequence', a 'sequence shot' containing all the action in a narrative sequence, a term he coined in 1 948 discussing Orson Welles. Arguing in the 'Decoupage'

B

ETWEEN

Decoupage. Vingt ans de cinema a Venise. Venice: Exposition international d'art cinematographique, 1 9 5 2 , 3 5 9-7 7 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

45

essay, therefore, that to assemble (or 'edit') a scene was to take 'the easy way out', he saw camera-based decoupage as seeking to 'dis­ cover the secret of a film narrative capable of expressing everything without fragmenting the world-of revealing the hidden meaning of beings and things without tearing the seamless fabric of reality' (p. 3o4). Bazin's 'Decoupage' essay is a curious beast. Both the English translation of its revised form of 1 95 8, dating from 1 967, and that of the original done in Venice in 1 9 5 2 suppress the term decoupage entirely, perversely translating it as editing and even montage, Bazin's sometimes bete noire. But the French versions also have contradic­ tions which cannot be accounted for, particularly Bazin's own occa­ sional switching back and forth between montage and decoupage. Although 'Decoupage' , published in Italy, went virtually un­ noticed in France during Bazin's lifetime (and beyond), it was read closely by one Jean-Luc Godard in the summer of 1 9 5 2 , no doubt in the offices of Cahiers du Cinema. Despite having just written a rebut­ tal of Andre Malraux's claim, in S KETC H FOR A PSYC HOLOGY OF THE C INEMA, that classical decoupage is the basis of film art, Godard now turned his sights on Bazin to argue precisely in favour of Malraux. This may have been due in part to a taste for contradiction, as God­ ard acknowledges ( 1 998Q, p. r o). More importantly, he was surely taking up Bazin's challenge to the classical decoupage aesthetic of Hollywood studio cinema, each playing his part in the ongoing debate in the pages of Cahiers over this cinema's merits. Against Malraux, Godard had claimed that 'the problem thus does not lie . . . in the sequencing of shots, but rather in the actor's movements within the frame' ( 1 998c, p. 78). His very next published text, entitled 'Defence and Illustration of Classical Decoupage' ap­ pearing six months after his response to Malraux and two months after Bazin's 'Decoupage', was a direct rebuttal of the latter's article. This time, Godard claimed: 'I even see in the spatial discontinu­ ity produced by a change of shot, which a few enthusiasts of the "ten minutes shot" [sic] view as an embarrassment, the reason for the greater degree of truth found in this stylistic device'. He issued a challenge to Bazin: 'I defy anyone to use a master shot to express the dire confusion, the inner agitation, the distress in short, that the quite inexpressive two-shot, for this very reason, renders so power­ fully' ( 1 998D, p. 8 3 ). The two-shot lay at the heart of the classical

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Hollywood studio aesthetic which Godard and his young friends loved so much, and about which Bazin was at best deeply ambivalent. In his own film practice, however, Godard would adopt an approach much closer to that outlined in his rebuttal of Malraux, consistently ignoring classical decoupage in favour of following 'the actor's movements within the frame' , a technique seen right from the start-in the bedroom scene in A bout de souffie ( 1 960), and even more radically in the apartment scene in Le Mepris three years later. This refusal to adopt classical decoupage techniques accounts in large part for the distance that separates even his 1 960s genre films from Hollywood product. Whereas Bazin's credo of the camera's 'automatic' recording of the integral 'image-event' and his prefer­ ence for in-camera narrative sequencing left little place for assembly, Godard's genius consists in devising an aesthetic which would em­ ploy and foreground both, in near-complete disregard for the con­ ventional decoupage he 'defended' in his polemic with Bazin in 1 9 5 2 . Bazin and Godard would face o ff one more time, i n 1 956, with back-to-back articles in Cahiers entitled, respectively, 'Assembly Pro­ hibited' and 'Assembly, My Fine Care'. Nearly a half-century later, a photograph of Bazin appeared in Chapter 4B, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( l 998), in the dying moments of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98); written across the screen is Bazin's admonition of 1 956, ASSEMBLY PROHIBITED ( 1 998A, vol. 4, pp. 2 74-7 5). On its heels comes a line almost identical to the phrase 'the seamless fabric of re­ ality' mentioned above, taken here from Bazin's text 'French Renoir', written the same year as 'Decoupage'. It was a sly and belated wink at a man whose ideas, in his lifetime, had little in common with God­ ard's own but who nonetheless exerted his own kind of influence. Timothy Barnard Andre Bazin. Decoupage, 202 2 . --- . Decoupage, 2 0 1 8 . ---

. William Wyler, the Jansenist of Mise en scene < 1 948>, 202 2c.

--- . Assembly Prohibited < 1 956>, 2 0 2 2 0 . Timothy Barnard. Decoupage (2 0 1 4), 202 2 . Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols., 1 998A. ---

. Suprematie du sujet ( 1 9 5 2), l 998c.

--- . Defense et illustration du decoupage classique ( 1 952), 1 9980. ---

. L'Art a partir de la vie, l 998Q.

S AM U EL BEC KET T The Image

'

one of Samuel Beckett's most enigmatic and little­ known texts. Written in French in th e 1 950s, initially pub­ lished in an obscure journal in 1 959, and republished as a tiny booklet by Editions de Minuit in 1 988, 'The Image' introduces the more radical vein of Beckett's prose. The work essentially constitutes a draft of How It Is ( 1 96 1 ). In La Pa resse , ]ean-Luc Godard's contribu­ tion to the omnibus film The Seven Deadly Sins ( 1 962), Eddie Con­ stantine appears reading a copy of How It Is, but Godard would turn to 'The Image' after the Minuit edition appeared in 1 98 8 . Possibly the shortest novel i n literary history, 'The Image' con­ sists of a single unpunctuated 1 , 1 76-word sentence stretching over ten small unnumbered pages. A narrative agent (he can barely be called a 'narrator') is mired in mud, which he either swallows or refuses by sticking out his tongue. He keeps wondering what his hands, legs and eyes are doing until, suddenly, he sees himself at sixteen. Out of this vision of a 'self' there flows a pastoral scene of a picnic with a girl, a dog, a field, a flock of sheep, a mountain range: whether this is a memory from the past or a fiction created to keep himself company and pass the time it is impossible to say. This 'image' will make the narrator smile, before it all comes to an end and withdraws again: 'the tongue comes out again lolls in the mud I stay like this no more thirst the tongue goes in the mouth closes it must be a straight line now it's done I've done the image' (p. 1 68). The image may be a kind of allegory for the work of the writer: using lan­ guage (langue in the original French text, which also means tongue) to gather the materials for the image to be made before finishing once again. Beckett's idea recalls something Henri Bergson said-it is the final sentence of his book MATTER AND MEMORY-which God­ ard has often quoted: 'spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom' (p. 249). 'The Image' makes an unremarkable appearance in Film Social­ isme (2 0 r n). The end of the text is recited by the young protagonist in a textual montage that blends a phrase from Paul Ricoeur, another about digital technology, the name Saint Augustine, the French Rev-

L

IMAGE IS

L'Image. X- A Quarterly Review 1 (November 1 95 9), 3 5- 3 7 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard olution and fraternity (p. 48). 'The Image' plays a more significant role in Chapter I B , 'Une Histoire seule' ( 1 989/98) of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98). At the beginning of the chapter, a tightly-framed shot of the concluding lines of Beckett's text appears ( l 998A, vol. l , p. 1 5 5). This opening image cuts up Beckett's text by starting at its end, just as the film's 'story'-the history of cinema-is taken up from its end point. In addition, it uses telescoped fragments extracted from their narrative continuity, turning written text into visual images. This textual image is accompanied by a clip from Anthony Mann's The Man from Laramie ( 1 9 5 5 ) about being an old loner, which functions as a comment on the solitary and laborious nature of Histoire(s) du cinema itself. There follows an aphorism from Robert Bresson's NOTES ON THE C INEMATOGRAPH spoken by Godard: 'Be sure of having used to the full all that is communicated by immobil­ ity and silence' (p. 1 6; l 998A, vol. l , p. 1 54) . 'The Image' thus func­ tions from the outset as a reflexive prompt, an expose of the film's materials (language, images), a kind of enigmatic epigraph which at the same time offers a promise. This image of the text reappears later in the chapter, but this time with the cover of the Minuit edi­ tion, displaying its typical blue on a white background. Other Minuit covers appear in the film, including Marguerite Duras' THE WAR : A MEMOIR. This time, 'The Image' is connected to a series of slogans which resonate through it: 'the image will come at the time of the resurrection'; 'the first image ' ; and 'not a just image/just an image' ( 1 998A, vol. l , pp. 1 98, 2 1 4, 2 2 0-2 1 , 2 2 2). These lines refer to Godard's variations on the image, but also to the different decades when these ideas arose. Around the nineteenth minute, after a rapid montage sequence which a little earlier had linked the Lumieres' Train Entering a Station ( 1 89 7), Abel Gance's The Wheel ( 1 9 2 3) and the image of a train of deported Jews (making a historical connection that sums up Godard's poetics of the history of cinema), THE IMAGE flashes on screen, framed by a circular black iris and accompanied by a phrase spoken by Godard, adapted from Ludwig Wittgenstein's Culture and Value: ' [Cinema, like] Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather it . . . says . . . believe through thick and thin, which you can only do as the result of a life' (p. 3 2 ; l 998A, vol. l , pp. 2 00- r o) . Here the image as projection/revelation should win our devout adherence, as the religious iconography from Giotto's Madonna and Child and ROBERTO ROSS ELLINI 's Joan ofArc at

S A M U E L B E C K E TT

49

the Stake ( 1 9 54), coupled with the image of the young couple beside the movie projector in Ingmar Bergman's Prison ( 1 949), helps to con­ firm. THE IMAGE, still encircled by a black iris, quickly appears and disappears, as if Godard were trying to convey the film's intermittent movement through the projector and the unfathomable movement of the sacred, which steals away by revealing itself, in all its whiteness. Around the twenty-seventh minute, in a segment on Africa and colonialism, the earlier text fragment from 'The Image' returns ( 1 998A, vol. l , p. 2 2 5), edited alongside a troubling image, in colour, of a black child covered in mud ('the tongue comes out I in the mud I no more thirst'), its head surrounded by white hands. The intertitle WHITE SHADOWS alludes to White Shadows in the South Seas ( 1 9 2 8), a film by WS. Van Dyke and Robert Flaherty. This segment of the film on Africa incorporates black-and-white photographs taken during the late 1 9 70s in the course of work carried out in Mozambique by Sonimage, Godard's film production company. In these images of a utopian project capturing the birth of a nation without its own images, an African child holds in his hands 'the first image'. Following these primitive first images ('only images'), full of hope, shots from White Shadows in the South Seas depict images of conquering and oppressive colonialism, linked to Errol Flynn's Captain Blood ( 1 9 3 5) and Mussolini 's 'ordinary fascism', as if this first image (this desire for the image, the beauty of these images) had been colonised by the image of white men, literally by the image of whiteness (the white cover of the Minuit edition of the text, L'Image) . Maurice Blanchot, in FRIEND S H I P : 'The image is joy-but close to it lies nothingness', quoted in Chapter 4B, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998) of Histoire(s) du cinema (p. 40; l 998A, vol. 4, p. 2 99). This is what Beckett's 'The Image' had already told us. Andre Habib Samuel Beckett. The Image, 1 995· --- . L'lmage, 1 988. Henri Bergson. Matter and Memory < l 896>, l 988. Maurice Blanchot. Friendship < 1 9 7 1 >, 1 997· Robert Bresson. Notes on the Cinematograph < 1 975>, 2 0 1 6n. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. . Film Socialisme, 2 0 1 00. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Culture and Value < 1 977>, 1 984---

S AM U EL BEC KET T Happy Days

I

1 967 interview with Cahiers du Cinema, Jean­ Luc Godard made the following statement about Samuel Beck­ ett's two-act play Happy Days: I once intended to make a film of Happy Days. I never did be­ cause they wanted me to take on Madeleine Renaud whereas I wanted to use young actors. I'd have liked to do it because I had a text and all I needed to do was film it. I'd have had just a single tracking shot beginning in long shot and ending in close­ up. It would have started at precisely the distance necessary to bring me into close shot in an hour and a half, to end on the last sentence. It was just a matter of elementary arithmetic, a simple calculation of speed in relation to time (pp. 2 9 7-98).

N AN OCTOBER

The idea is fascinating, and the project fires the imagination in more than one respect. The list of films Godard never made and projects he never completed is long and full of surprising and instructive ex­ amples. In his work they are part of a kind of performance of failure which exacerbates and at times politicises the aesthetic, technological, economic and institutional issues around reality and the possibil­ ity of artistic creation. They inform us about the completed films, for which the aborted projects often serve as the embryo, and about Godard's relations with producers and actors. They also reflect cities, authors and institutions as eclectic as the Holy See (Godard wanted to meet the Pope to conduct an interview around Je vous salue, Marie [ 1 985]); the government of Mozambique (Godard visited the country with a crew to contribute to the establishment of a national tele­ vision service); the College de France (where he wished to obtain a research chair); the Pompidou Centre (with Godard's infamous exhibition, Voyage(s) en utopie [ 2006]); the city of Lausanne (prompt­ ing the short film Lettre a Freddy Buache [ 1 982]); and Samuel Beckett himself (whom he approached for permission to adapt Happy Days). Godard's interaction with Beckett signals the extent to which Beckett could be obtuse in matters regarding the choice of actors to interpret his work. The idea of Godard filming Beckett is fas­ cinating because in 1 967, the time of La Chinoise ( 1 967), Week-end ( 1 967) and One Plus One ( 1 968), one might well have wondered why

Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts. London: Faber and Faber, r 96 r .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

51

Godard would want to adapt this masterpiece of the theatre of the absurd, performed in Paris for the first time at the Odeon theatre in 1 963 , directed by Roger Blin and starring Madeleine Renaud. At first glance, the play appears removed from Godard's aesthetic and political horizons. What could have attracted him to this simultane­ ously terrifying and humorous play? A play about the everyday life of Winnie, buried up to her bosom (and then, in the second act, up to her neck) in a mound shaped like a teat, who whiles away the time with little rituals, small comforts, empty gestures, prayer and song, joyously chattering away-despite the cries in her head-at Willie, her limp rag of a husband, who for all intents and purposes remains silent throughout the play. In the Cahiers interview, Godard's enthusiasm boils down to a certain ease of execution ('I had a text, and all I needed to do was film it . . . . It was just a matter of elementary arithmetic'), the wish to film a dialogue, and the desire to work with young actors. And we know how much he was committed to this at the time, having made Masculin Feminin: 1 5 faits pricis ( 1 966) and La Chinoise (would Anne Wiazemsky have played Winnie?), whereas in the play the two char­ acters are middle-aged (as indicated in the text of the play). Winnie is in her fifties and Willie in his sixties, and these have generally been the ages of the actors who have played the roles. Beyond the subject and genre of the play itself, one is struck by the idea of a sequence shot tracking forward, stretched out over ninety minutes to record the reading of the text which needed only to spill from the actors' mouths by means of a kind of mathematical automatism. One thinks of the virtuoso tracking shots in Week-end and the long sequence shots dubbed with verbal or musical perfor­ mances in One Plus One. The interest of the anecdote also lies in Godard's inventiveness, in his having imagined a simple and singu­ lar way of conveying the subj ect of the play (and, we might say, of Beckett's entire body of work): by exhausting what is possible. This visual translation of a reduction or contraction of possibilities was also conceived around the same time as the broadcast of Beckett's play Eh Joe, which employs a quite similar strategy, on German and British television (appearing on the BBC in July 1 966). This made­ for-TV film (Beckett's first) was created for the most part around a series of forward tracking shots which framed the individual charac­ ters seated on chairs, advancing a metre at a time and interrupted by

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

52

an off-screen female voice, a kind of mental tormentor for Joe, in an increasingly close-up shot until the text ended on an extreme close­ up of the character's face. Godard's idea was also contemporaneous with advances in ex­ perimental film, in particular in its structural branch (although this term, coined by P. Adams Sitney, did not appear until 1 969). Michael Snow filmed his masterpiece, Wavelength, in a New York City loft in 1 966; it was screened for the first time a year later, in December 1 967, at the Knokke-Le-Zoute experimental film festival. This forty­ five-minute film, skilfully handling speed and time, crossed the room from the widest angle to the closest using a series of very slow zooms culminating in a close-up of a photograph pinned to the wall. Could Godard have been aware of the film? The other question we must ask ourselves is whether Godard had read, or seen, Beckett's play. If so, is it possible that he perceived not only this joy in the heart of a situation in which hope constantly dwindles (Happy Days is surely the least despairing of Beckett's plays) and in Winnie's resistance despite the crisis in her head, but also the inventiveness imposed by the play's constraints? Making the most of what you have, or keeping a stiff upper lip against adversity, and turning misfortune to a blessing (to speak in an old-fashioned man­ ner like Winnie) with a kind of desperate joy: is this not, in the end, the secret to Godard's longevity? Finally, is this not also a banal re­ minder that, in the summer and fall of 1 967, Godard was probably having his own share of happy days? Andre Habib Samuel Beckett. Happy Days, 2006. --

. oh /es beauxjours, 2 0 1 9.

Jean-Luc Godard. Struggling on Two Fronts < 1 967>, l 986s.

S AM U EL BEC KET T Ill

Seen Ill Said

of Prinom Carmen ( 1 983) Uncle Jean, who is also called Monsieur Jeannot and is played by Jean­ Luc Godard himself, appears in a hospital. In his room, he strikes various objects to hear the sounds they make and then types on a typewriter beneath a series of random signs: 'Mal vu'. A few moments later, a nurse takes the page from his hands and reads: "'Ill seen ill said": Look at that, you've done a good job today! ' This al­ lusion to Samuel Beckett's work is twofold. On one hand, it refers to the title of a work whose original French edition, Mal vu ma! dit, was published in 1 98 1 , shortly before the film was made. It was one of Beckett's last works before his death in 1 989. Irresistibly, one also thinks of the beginning of Molloy ( 1 95 1), in which the narrator finds himself in a hospital room, where a man comes every Sunday to take away his sheets of paper ('so many pages, so much money') and return those from the previous week: 'Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work anymore' (p. 3). It is this man who comes to collect the scribblings of the narrator (which make up, we realise, the novel we are reading) and who 'told me I had begun all wrong, that I should have begun differently. He must be right. I began at the beginning, like an old ballocks, can you imagine that? Here's my beginning. Because they're keeping it apparently' (p. 4) . This figure of the writer working for an anonymous authority (a book publisher or film producer) who exploits his work, but also this work-within-a-work effect at the beginning of the novel we are about to read (or, in the case of]ean-Luc Godard, at the beginning of the film about to unfold), brings to mind those films from the 1 980s in which Godard (often dressed in a cap) appears as an alien­ ated, jubilant and regressive figure, an idiot or prince, especially in Shakespeare's KING LEAR ( 1 987h oo2) and Soigne ta droite, ou Une Place sur la terre ( 1 987). Over these films hangs reference to Beckett's work and its ludicrous, grotesque and absurd qualities, in particular through the presence of Jacques Villeret, who is unobtrusive in Pri­ nom Carmen but the main element in Soigne ta droite. Ill Seen Ill Said: Godard was captivated by this title, which forcefully references in

A

T THE BEGINNING

Mal vu ma! dit. Paris: Minuit, 1 98 1 .

54

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

just a few words our incapacity for seeing and saying, the failure of sight and speech. Godard appears sympathetic to Beckett's late prose, built around repeating, varying and running over again situations without narrative development or conclusion. The hiccoughing and almost mechani­ cal rhythm of these situations share features with the syncopated sampling of the montage and paratactic narrative structure of God­ ard's films. The staccato diction of Beckett's protagonists also shares an affinity with Godard. Consider the following passage from Ill Seen Ill Said: 'Was it ever over and done with questions? Dead the whole brood no sooner hatched. Long before. In the egg. Long before. Over and done with answering. With not being able. With not being able not to want to know. With not being able. No. Never. A dream. Question answered' (p. 462). There may also be a connection between this jarring, telegraphic style and the typewriter-an important character in Godard's films, as seen in its staccato performance in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 98998)-which creates a beat like the metronome in Prinom Carmen. We find a similar spatial arrangement between a Beckett text and typewriting in the 'I am a machine' section of 'Moi, Je', an astound­ ing unfilmed script written in 1 97 3 and published in Jean-Luc God­ ard: Documents. In this typewritten script is found a brief quotation of Beckett's short story 'Enough' ( 1 966), framed by an accumulation of abstract graphic symbols forming a background of visual 'noise' ( 2 006B, p. 2 l 8). The arrangement of phrases and signs is a graphic reflection of the rhythm and syntax of this text, like an equivalent of the mechanical medium which reproduced it: 'Delayed continuous communication with immediate redeparture. Same thing with de­ layed redeparture' (2006c, p. 3 68). Similarly, it is often by means of one or several reproduction media that Beckett's work (but not his alone, of course) appears in Godard's films. This is the case with the end of Made in U.S.A. ( 1 966), when Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) interrupts the playback on a small tape recorder-the technique used in Beckett's Krapp s Last Tape ( 1 9 5 8)-to dictate another passage from 'Enough', the text quoted in 'Moi, Je': 'Night. As long as day in this endless equinox. It falls and we go on. Before dawn we are gone' (2 006c, p. 3 69). More strikingly, in Soigne ta droite, in which the character played by Jacques Villeret, struck by sensorimotor ankylosis in a manner

S A M U E L B E C K ETT

55

worthy of Beckett's prostrated figures, painfully switches on a tape recorder on which are recorded sentences of Beckett's taken from 'Texts for Nothing' (written 1 950-5 2) and spoken by Villeret himself (with a Belgian accent!): 'When I think, no, that won't work, when come those who knew me, perhaps even know me still, by sight of course, or by smell, it's as though, it's as if, come on, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun' (2 006B, p. 3 3 l ). Or yet again: 'I have always felt as if, inside me, someone had been murdered', a striking remark by Beckett (here slightly modified) in discussion with Charles Juliet in 1 968 and first published in French in 1 986. Beckett added: 'Mur­ dered before my birth. I had to find this murdered being. Try to give him life' (p. l 3). Beckett's words explain the enigmatic phrase Vil­ leret utters next: 'No, before birth . . . . Of course it will give it life'. Godard has often raised the question: What happened before­ hand? Doesn't this question make it possible to try always to mini­ mise ill seeing and ill saying? Has not reanimating the murdered within us been a significant part of Godard's labour of redemption and resurrection since the 1 980s, and in particular in Histoire(s) du cinema? Andre Habib Samuel Beckett. Ill Seen Ill Said, 2006.

. Molloy < l 9 5 l >, 2 006A. . Texts for Nothing ( 1 962), 20068. . Enough < 1 966>, 2 006c. Jean-Luc Godard . Moi, je, 2006B. Charles Juliet. Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde < l 986>, 2009. ---

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ROBERT BENAYOU N The Look of Buster Keaton a down-and-out filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard appears three times in Prenom Carmen ( 1 983). In his first scene, he is a patient at a mental hospital who is apparently using the place as a personal retreat: the doctors can find nothing wrong and threaten to discharge him. His niece Carmen (Maruschka Detmers) visits to ask if she can borrow his vacation home at the sea­ shore, where she and some friends supposedly plan to shoot a film. Their filmmaking plans constitute an elaborate front for a robbery/ kidnapping scheme. Uncle Jean reappears in the middle of Prenom Carmen in a Paris cafe, where he meets one of Carmen's co-con­ spirators. To add a veneer of legitimacy to their bogus scheme, they hope to hire him to direct their non-existent film. Carmen and her gang now plan to carry out their kidnapping in the dining room of the Hotel Intercontinental, where Uncle Jean joins them near the end of the film. As he enters the cafe in his second scene, Uncle Jean carries a copy of the original French edition of Robert Benayoun's illustrated homage, Le Regard de Buster Keaton. He continues to hold the volume throughout the cafe sequence. The book performs several functions in Prinom Carmen. Its inclusion may be a conciliatory gesture: since the start of Godard's filmmaking career, the latter-day Surrealist Benayoun had been one of his fiercest critics, having blasted his early films in the pages of Positif. Despite their past differences, the per­ spective Benayoun articulates in The Look of Buster Keaton closely resembles Godard's concept of film as art. A large-format volume mainly comprised of frame enlargements and photographic stills of Keaton from throughout his filmmaking career (some of which Godard would use in Histoire(s) du cinema [ 1 989-98]), the book also contains several brief chapters that emphasise Keaton's artistry. Christopher Sharrett calls The Look ofBuster Keaton 'an attempt to put Keaton in a cultural context and to show how his genius tran­ scends the genre of comedy' (p. 54). Prior to his study of Keaton, Be­ nayoun was widely credited with 'discovering' Jerry Lewis in France in the mid- 1 95os and with establishing the critical basis for the comic's cult following there (Godard was an aficionado, placing The

P

LAYING UNCLE JEAN,

Le Regard de Buster Keaton . Paris: H ers cher, 1 98 2 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

57

Nutty Professor [ 1 963] on his top ten film list the year of its release). What James Kirkup says about Benayoun's book-length apprecia­ tion of Jerry Lewis, Bonjour Monsieur Lewis, also applies to The Look ofBuster Keaton: 'This work is a classic example of French intellectu­ ality, when the critical faculty is expressed in the form of a declara­ tion of love and an aesthetic manifesto' (p. 1 8). Benayoun elevates Keaton's films far above the level of popular entertainment, linking them with some of the foremost writers and artists of their day. One chapter compares Buster Keaton and Franz Kafka. Another discusses Keaton's ties to Dada and Surrealism. Emphasising his creativity and sacrifice, Benayoun makes Keaton an artist-hero on an epic quest. Besides making peace with Benayoun, Godard's use of The Look of Buster Keaton pays tribute to Keaton. Prinom Carmen is the first of three fiction films of the 1 980s in which Godard steps out from behind the camera to play a role in it. As both director and actor, he assumes a position not dissimilar to Keaton's. Godard's style of acting has close ties with Keaton and other stars of silent comedy. As Uncle Jean in Prinom Carmen, the bumbling filmmaker in Soigne ta droite, ou Une Place sur la terre ( 1 987) and Professor Pluggy in KING LEAR ( 1 987/zoo2), Godard proves himself adept when it comes to physical comedy. He clearly enjoys roles that let him play the buffoon, as he and co-director Jean-Pierre Gorin also did in Vladimir et Rosa ( 1 9 7 1). This taste for Keatonesque physical comedy would still be pre­ sent in 2 0 1 5 when, on the occasion of being awarded the Prix suisse, Godard made the short film Prix suisse-Remerciements-Mort ou vif. For much of the film he is seen lying on the floor in his home, or tumbling onto it or hauling himself up from it, while muttering a seemingly haphazard deadpan monologue on the state of cinema. The physical gestures in Prinom Carmen have a serious side as well. The silent films of Buster Keaton reinforce the importance of gesture as language. Prinom Carmen uses music to enhance the meaning of the physical gestures between Carmen and Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffe). Their story is intercut with shots of a string quartet rehearsing some of Beethoven's later compositions. Physical gestures link the two plots, as Godard tries to match, for example, the gestures of an arm drawing a bow across a violin with Joseph's gestures as he makes love to Carmen. The physical similarities allow Godard to continue exploring one of his most pervasive themes: the inextricability of love, art and work.

58

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

Speaking about his use of Beethoven in Prenom Carmen, God­ ard said the pieces the quartet rehearses follow their order of com­ position and thus provide a chronological narrative element to the music. The film references in Prenom Carmen function similarly. In the opening scene, Uncle Jean, having been ostracised from the filmmaking community, contemplates a comeback. He holds a large boom box, telling Carmen it is his new camera. Though playful and facetious, his words reinforce the importance of sound to motion pictures. The unusual blending of voice track and sound effects that occurs throughout Prenom Carmen reminds audiences of the sound mixing process, thus strengthening the association between sound and physical gesture. Talking with Carmen's co-conspirator in the cafe, Uncle Jean seems ready to resume his filmmaking career, hop­ ing his comeback will function as MARCEL PROUST's madeleine; in other words, that it will elicit all his memories of times past. He relates a fanciful story about how he was blacklisted after shooting a film with Marlene Dietrich. His presence in the hotel dining room marks the resumption of his career as a filmmaker. In short, Uncle Jean's personal relationship with filmmaking in Prenom Carmen recapitulates the history of cinema. As he carries a copy of The Look of Buster Keaton in his middle scene, Uncle Jean makes a return to filmmaking that symbolises a return to the roots of cinema, a return to the purity of form Benayoun describes. When Uncle Jean appears in the hotel dining room to shoot the film, however, Benayoun's book has disappeared. Uncle Jean now clutches a copy of Variety, the trade magazine of the enter­ tainment industry. Whereas The Look of Buster Keaton emphasises the artistry of film, comparing it with literature and painting, Variety stresses film as a commercial product, something to be marketed to consumers to turn a profit. The wealthy capitalist and potential kid­ napping victim holds the only book visible in the hotel dining room scene: Edouard Chambost's New Guide to Tax Havens ( 1 982). In the history of cinema, the love of money has supplanted the love of art. Kevin ]. Hayes Robert Benayoun. The Look of Buster Keaton, 1 98 3 . James Kirkup. Obituary: Robert Benayoun, 1 996. Christopher Sharrett. The Look of Buster Keaton, 1 984.

HENRI BERG S ON Matter and Memory

E E ATI RE ET M MOIRE,

the central work of French phi­ losopher and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Henri Bergson, has had an enduring influence in the more than r 2 5 years since its publication. The growing use of archival foot­ age in the late work of Jean-Luc Godard allows us to understand elements of Matter and Memory in a new light, especially when we consider that memory is one means, for Bergson, of overcoming the mind/body dichotomy that RENE DESCARTES affirms as one of the foundational claims of Western philosophical thought. Memory, Bergson argues, is a point of contact between mind and body, be­ tween spirit and matter. It is what disqualifies any and all dualist ontologies which attempt to establish an absolute separation or divide between consciousness and world. On the contrary, consciousness emerges as such through its engagement with matter-images, and memory becomes a means for the individual to retain remnants or traces of these past encounters with the world. Remnants or traces of these encounters can be reactivated in the present in response to new sources of external stimuli. Memories are multi-faceted; they are neither purely subj ective nor purely objective. They exist at the juncture where one folds into the other. This is precisely what is demonstrated in a work such as Histoire(s) du cinema ( r 989-98), where the consciousness of the filmmaker comes into contact with a series of images that are (primarily) not his own, but which become so through his engagement with them, through their incorporation into his films and video essays. These images are cinematic in nature, but their difference from the images that Bergson discusses is one of degree and not kind. At one point in his study, Bergson describes memory as the 'survival of past images' (p. 66), and while he never considers the role photography might play in materialising this memory and in keeping this memory alive (as for cinema, his volume is strictly contemporaneous with the earliest screenings of Lumiere films), there is no reason why we cannot do so for him. The archival material which Godard reworks in Histoire(s) is quite literally matter and memory; it is also memory become matter.

M

Mati'ere et memoire: Essai sur la relation du corps a /'esprit. Paris: F. Akan, r 896.

60

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

There is an early reference to Bergson in Masculin Fiminin: 1 5 faits pricis ( 1 966) when, in response to the question 'What do young women dream about? ', and in an attempt to make clear that 'there is no average Frenchwoman', a contrast is made between factory work­ ers too exhausted to make love; service industry employees likely to dabble in prostitution to bolster their incomes; and the educated up­ per classes 'who only know Bergson and Uean-Paul] SARTRE, because their bourgeois parents keep them locked up' . These words heard in voice-over, spoken by Catherine-Isabelle (Catherine-Isabelle Duport), sound like a quotation (possibly from a newspaper or mag­ azine article) but their source remains unclear. The statement itself does not suggest engagement on the filmmaker's part; the viewer is not encouraged to search out and read Bergson. It is not until the late 1 980s that Bergson makes a reappearance in Godard's work in a more serious and engaged fashion. In Chapters l A, 'Toutes les histoires' ( 1 989/98), and 2 B , 'Fatale beaute' ( 1 998), of Histoire(s) du cinema, the filmmaker is twice shown smoking a cigar, pulling a red-covered book off his shelf and reading its title. This book is a Presses universitaires de France reprinting of Bergson's Matiere et mimoire, before this publisher came out with a larger criti­ cal edition. (It is only when placing these two scenes side by side that it becomes evident that they are two separate takes of the same action.) Several years later, two video essays- The Old Place: Small Notes Regarding the A rts at Fall of 20th Century ( 1 999, with Anne­ Marie Mieville) and De l'origine du XX!ieme siecle (2 000)-quote the final sentence of the same text: 'spirit borrows from matter the per­ ceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom' (p. 249). This sentence is spoken twice in The Old Place, first by Mieville and then by Godard. The second time, the quotation is truncated and the wording slightly modified so as to place more stress on certain words (matter, movement, freedom); it is accompanied by a video image of hands moulding clay and details of a painting. The linking of images and sounds suggests that spirit is a reference to the artist-who engages with the sensorial world in order to create art-and the completed work serves as the artist's contribution to the flux or flow of matter-images. There are also two occasions in The Old Place when the title MATIER AND MEMORY appears inscribed on the screen: as grey

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HENRI BERG S O N

text with a black background (the words appear as though suspend­ ed in a void); and as white text superimposed over a photographic reproduction of a sculpture. Finally, in Godard's Eloge de /'amour (200 1 ) , we hear one of the characters, Rosenthal (Claude Baignieres), retort to another that memory is not an obligation but a right. 'Read Bergson', he says, by way of explanation (p. 303). It is surely no coincidence that Godard would turn to Bergson in this period, one focused increasingly on the interrelated themes of history, time and memory. These themes are explored by Godard at multiple levels, nowhere more complexly than in Eloge de /'amour with its protagonist Edgar (Bruno Putzulu) struggling to realise an artistic project on S I M ONE WEIL, and the film's bifurcated structure: the first half (the present) shot with 3 5mm black-and-white film; the second (the past) shot with over-saturated digital colour. This struc­ ture encourages us to explore-alongside Edgar-the links that bind the present to the past and the past to the future. (And even this de­ scription is too simple, as the use of monochrome film stock confers a past-tense quality on the present, while the non-naturalistic colour makes the past seem fully present.) Working with these memory-images, placing them in new con­ texts, as Godard does, allows for their re-activation, their re-inte­ gration, into our collective data bank. It keeps these memory traces alive within the opus that we call Histoire(s) du cinema as well as in the memory of its viewer. Such works as these make clear the continued relevance of Bergson's Matter and Memory. It is a book which con­ tinues to attract new readers, precisely because its novel approach to understanding the relation between mind, body, memory and world seems relevant not only to philosophers or scientists but also to artists. Bergson's ideas, which may first appear difficult or opaque, become something else altogether with repeat readings. Sam Ishii-Gonzales Henri Bergson. Matter and Memory, I 9 88 . --- .

Matiere et memoire,

201 2.

Jean-Luc Godard. JLG/JLG e t autres textes, 2 0 2 2 .

M AU RI C E BLANC HOT Friendship

ISTOIRE(s) DU CINEMA

( 1 989-98) ends with Jean-Luc Godard reading a series of quotations which are intro­ duced visually as the names of their authors appear on screen in block letters. In addition to Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Hollis Frampton, ARTHUR RIMBAUD , GEORGES BATAILLE, Emily Dickinson and JORGE LUIS BORGES, these names include the twen­ tieth-century French critic and essayist Maurice Blanchot. Perhaps the word 'quotation' is inadequate. The titles of the works these texts come from are never mentioned, and many of the texts have been modified to suit the film. Godard had used the same technique earlier in Histoire (s) du cinema, providing a long passage from E lie Faure's HI STORY OF ART about Rembrandt, transformed by Alain Cuny's reading into a eulogy for cinema and the power it possesses. Instead of calling them quotations, some commentators have preferred to describe these texts as recirculated writings or, more simply, rewrit­ ings. But these rewritings are never isolated; rather, they are caught in a close network of images and sounds and draw their profound meaning from the relations established by the montage of these various elements. In the last few minutes of Chapter 4B, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( l 998), the final episode of Histoire(s) du cinema, grey letters on a black background spell out the name MAURICE BLANCHOT, followed by a photograph of the reclusive writer, taken without his knowledge by a paparazzo for the magazine Lire in 1 98 5 . On the soundtrack, Godard reads a rewritten excerpt from Blanchot's L'Amitie, a collec­ tion of cultural, literary and philosophical essays that sparkles with brilliant insights. Blanchot's characterisation of Franz Kafka-'a genius of prompt perceptions, capable of conveying the essential in a few swift strokes' ( 1 98 1 , p. 1 2 8)-applies to Blanchot himself. The fragmentary nature of his ideas gives them a delicate quality. Perhaps John Updike put it best: 'Blanchot's prose gives an impression, like Henry James', of carrying meanings so fragile they might crumble in transit' (p. 544). Godard's text stems from an essay in Friendship entitled 'The Museum, Art and Time' . In a sepulchral voice, Godard intones,

H

L'Amitii. Paris: Ga llimard,

1 97 r .

Reading w ith Jean -Luc Godard modifying Blanchot's text: 'Cinema thus I had nothing I to fear I from the rest I or from itself I it was not I sheltered I from time I it was where time I took shelter' ( 1 998A, vol. 4, p. 2 99; 1 997, p. 3 7). As Godard reads these words in voice-over, an image of the eponymous vampire from F.W Murnau's Nosferatu ( 1 9 2 2) is superimposed on the photograph of Blanchot. Godard then resumes speaking, con­ densing Blanchot: Yes, the image is joy-but close to it lies nothingness . . . . And all the power of the image . . . cannot be expressed except by call­ ing to nothingness . . . . Perhaps one must add that the image, capable of negating nothingness, is also the gaze of nothingness upon us. It is light, and it is immensely heavy. It shines, and it is the diffuse thickness in which nothing reveals itself (p. 40; 1 998A, vol. 4, pp. 2 99-300). The montage is disconcerting. Why does Godard link Blanchot with the vampire from Murnau's film? Does their physical similarity­ emaciated face, dark clothes, long-limbed silhouette-justify such a comparison? Their work offers another point of contact. As Leslie Hill observes, Blanchot is the author of a psychological novella entitled Le Dernier Homme (The Last Man, 1 9 5 7), and Murnau is the director of Der letzte Mann (The Last Man, 1 924), known in French as Le Dernier des hommes. Another explanation is possible. Whereas Blanchot sees an image as existing in the interstice separating light from shadow, which threatens at every moment to engulf it, Nos­ feratu extends his dominion over the nocturnal world but dies upon exposure to the day's first glimmer of light. In this case, the montage would be based on antithesis, not similarity. 'The Museum, Art and Time' is a study of Andre Malraux's P S YCHOLOGY OF ART, a work that has long intrigued Godard. With its method of juxtaposing incongruous images, Histoire(s) du cinema perpetuates Malraux's I MAGINARY MUSEUM OF WORLD SCULPTURE. Other essays in Friendship demonstrate that Blanchot and Godard share a fondness for some of the same authors (Georges Bataille, MARGUERITE DURAS , RAYMOND QUENEAU) , works (Claude Levi­ Strauss' Tristes I'ropiques, Robert Antelme's The Human Race), and at least one artist (Alberto Giacometti). 'The Last Word', one of Blan­ chot's studies of Kafka in Friendship, may have given Godard the title for a short video, Le Dernier Mot ( 1 988). Friendship is also a leitmotif of Histoire(s) du cinema. At the beginning of Chapter l B, 'Une His-

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard to ire seule' ( 1 989/98), Wallace Ford declares his friendship to Jam es Stewart in a clip from Anthony Mann's The Man from Laramie ( 1 9 5 5 ) ; at the end of Chapter 3 B, 'Une Vague nouvelle' ( 1 998), Godard lists several former companions. Whether Godard attentively read every essay in Friendship while making Histoire(s) du cinema matters little. What counts is the possible encounter between the two works and the community-an 'unavowable' community, Blanchot describes it-which, together, they delineate. Godard returns to his rewritten quotations from Friendship in The Old Place: Small Notes Regarding the Arts at Fall of 20th Century ( 1 999, with Anne-Marie Mieville), Eloge de !'amour (200 1 ) and Notre Musique (2004), letting their texts shed light on his poetics of the cinematic image. In addition to Faure's remarks on Rembrandt, other texts that function similarly include Pierre Reverdy's THE IMAGE, which has recurred in many of Godard's films since Passion ( 1 982); a fragment from Robert Bresson's NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPH, which describes assembling images as having the power to transform them; the final lines of Samuel Beckett's THE IMAGE, found through­ out Histoire(s) and recited in the second part of Film Socialisme (20 r n) and in Adieu au langage (2 0 1 4); a phrase attributed to St Paul an­ nouncing the arrival of the image at the time of the Resurrection; a passage from Georges Bataille's 'Love for a Mortal Being' ( 19 5 1 ) , which contrasts 'the image of a loved one' with 'the image of the state' (p. r n) ; etc. These texts do not necessarily define the image, but they constitute, along with the visuals and the sounds, one of the three elements used by the montage to bring together mean­ ings in order to produce an image. The image, for Godard, is always invisible, unheard, ineffable. It is neither Blanchot's phrase, nor his photograph, nor that of Murnau's vampire, but the three brought together-which may be another form of friendship. Arthur Mas Maurice Blanchot. Friendship, 1 997. Georges Bataille. L'Amour d'un etre mortel ( 1 9 5 1), 2 0 1 2 . Maurice Blanchot. De Kafka a Kafka, 1 98 1 . Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols . , 1 998A. Leslie Hill. A Form that Thinks, 2 004. John Updike. Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism, 1 9 8 3 .

J ORGE LUI S BORGES Other In quisitions

0 TRAS INQUISICIONES,

the title Jorge Luis Borges chose for his 1 95 2 collection of essays, refers to his first essay collec­ tion, Inquisiciones (meant in the sense of inquiry or investi­ gation), published in 1 92 5 but later disavowed by Borges, who would not allow it to be reprinted and reportedly bought up copies of the book and destroyed them. Other Inquisitions contains essays on a range of literary and philosophical topics through authors including Coleridge, Hawthorne, Kafka, Whitman and Wilde, as well as dis­ cussions of a proposed universal language, mathematics and religion, and a refutation of time. Borges' considerable erudition is deployed in brief essays that are more suggestive of further thought than de­ finitive statements on the subjects they address and frequently give rise to multiple interpretations and enigmatic insights. Other Inquisitions was published in France in 1 95 7 (as Enquetes) and, along with other works by Borges, soon influenced French writ­ ers and filmmakers. Jean-Luc Godard drew on Borges' essays for several of the provocative statements made by the computer Alpha 60 in Alphaville: une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965) . These include the film's opening lines ('there are times when reality be­ comes too complex for Oral communication. But Legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world'), which are taken from the essay 'Forms of a Legend' (p. 1 49). Alphaville also contains several references to passages or works cited by Borges in 'New Refutation of Time', an essay exploring the themes of time and memory. Several of the essays in Other Inquisitions deal with the question of literary and artistic influence, questions which inevitably lead to concerns with time as a dimension of experience and a category of thought. In 'Kafka and his Precursors' , Borges begins with the as­ sumption that Kafka's literary voice and vision were unique, but he goes on to compile a list of writers whose work seems to anticipate and prepare the way for Kafka's accomplishments as a writer. This list includes Greek philosophers (Zeno), the ninth-century Chinese author Han Yu, Soren Kierkegaard and Robert Browning. What fascinated Borges is the ability of the work of a contemporary writer to affect the way we read the work of the past. Borges writes:

Otras inquisiciones (I 937-1 952) . Buenos Aires: Sur,

1 95 2 .

66

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard The poem 'Fears and Scruples' by Robert Browning is like a prophecy of Kafka's stories, but our reading of Kafka refines and changes our reading of the poem perceptibly. Browning did not read it as we read it now. The word 'precursor' is indis­ pensable in the vocabulary of criticism, but one should try to purify it from every connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future (p. r n8).

T.S. Eliot expressed a similar idea in TRADITION AND THE IND IVIDUAL where he acknowledged the impact of a new work of art on the already established literary or artistic 'tradition' to which it con­ tributes. In this way the new work reveals how 'the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past', redrawing the lines of historical progression by showing that they point in two directions at the same time-the past and the future. Such reflections on literary, artistic and particularly cinematic influence and authorship permeate Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98). Indeed, the cinema becomes a privileged exam­ ple of how complicated the lines of influence emanating from the work of art can become, particularly when that field of influence is understood as extending both forwards and backwards through history, rewriting the past just as it conditions the present and the future. It is in this dialogue among artists, writers and filmmakers of different generations, periods and styles that the aesthetic history of a medium can be said to exist. And such a perspective illuminates a fundamental aspect of Godard's work. The use of quotation, the proliferation of allusions to a wide range of literary works, films and filmmakers, poets, artists and philosophers, produces in Godard's films a dense network of references that implicitly place past and present in dialogue and signal the co-existence of multiple authorial voices within the singular text of the film. Histoire (s) du cinema contains many theses and observations res­ onant with these themes. The idea that film history can no longer be conceptualised as a singular 'grand narrative' but rather must be seen as a series of interrelated histories that involve technology, business practices, aesthetics and ideology is asserted repeatedly in the film, often from an ironic perspective. (Chapter l B , 'Une Histoire seule' [ 1 989/98] , of Histoire (s) : ' Cinema is not part of the communication industry, or the entertainment industry, but the cosmetics industry, TALENT,

JORGE LUIS B ORGES the industry o f masks, which i s only a small branch o f the industry of lies' [ 1 998A, vol. l , pp. 1 68-69] .) The psychological and ideologi­ cal effects of cinema, its ability to construct subject positions for the viewer to latch onto and identify with no less than its formative influence as a seedbed of ideas about the individual, society, love and sex, war, politics, style and fashion, are all thoroughly explored in the film by a montage of film and audio clips, quotations and references to works of literature and art whose cumulative effect is associative rather than argumentative and evocative rather than conclusive in its ideas. In Chapter 4B , 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), Godard refer­ ences Borges' essay 'The Flower of Coleridge', in which he pro­ poses a radical approach to understanding literary history not as the study of individual works by individual authors, but rather that of the interrelationships between works, a view that contributes to what Borges calls 'the doctrine that all authors are one' : 'The pantheist who declares that the plurality of authors is illusory finds unexpected support in the classicist, to whom that plurality matters little. For classical minds the literature is the essential thing, not the individu­ als' (p. 1 2 ). Such ruminations are consistent with Godard's similarly de­ centred vision of film history, which is decidedly not a history of 'great men' but rather a tracing of interrelationships, an exploration of lines of influence, some direct, but most oblique to the figures and works which he presents to us. Citing Coleridge's fragment as a metaphor for the paradox of artistic influence, in which causes and effects become hopelessly complex, Borges concludes: 'In the sphere of literature as in others, every act is the culmination of an infinite series of causes and the cause of an infinite series of effects' (p. l l ) . In Histoire(s) du cinema, Godard, the Nouvelle Vague innovator whose works were built upon a firm grasp of classical cinema but which also point the way towards alternative future screen practices, demon­ strates the relevance of Borges' insight to an understanding of film history. John Parris Springer Jorge Luis Borges. Other Inquisitions 1 93 7-1 952, 1 964.

--- . Otras inquisiciones, 2 0 1 0. --- . Autres inquisitions, 10 ro. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , r 998A.

J ORGE LUI S BORGES The Book of Imaginary Beings in his late films and videos, Jean-Luc Godard turns to the work of the Argentine poet, translator, essayist and short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges. This comes as no surprise given the affinities the artists share. God­ ard's hybrid combinations of fiction and non-fiction, inventive use of already existing texts and discourses, self-conscious exploration of the limits and resources of the media he deploys and meditation on his own authorial agency and persona could all, at some level, be described as 'Borgesian' . In Adieu au language (2 0 1 4), he quotes Borges' story 'The Other' ( 1 972), which stages a fantastic, dream­ like encounter between the elderly Borges and his younger, more optimistic self. More resonantly, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), the last chapter (4B) of Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), ends with a parable, recited by Godard himself in voice-over, of a man who wanders through paradise in a dream and, upon waking, discov­ ers a flower from the dream still clutched in his hand. The parable comes from two related Borges writings, his essay 'The Dream of Coleridge' ( 1 95 1 ) and his story 'The Yellow Rose' ( 1 960). In tell­ ing this parable Borges was already rewriting a notebook entry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who, in turn, was rewriting a passage by J ean Paul. In Histoire (s) , this multiple-authored story comments on Godard's own 'unoriginal' , quotation-driven practice. It at once affirms his singular importance in the history of cinema ('I was that man', Godard says, referring to the dreamer) and mingles his author­ ship ambiguously with that of other figures. In their co-directed video essay The Old Place: Small Notes Regard­ ing the Arts at Fall of 20th Century ( 1 999), Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville draw on Borges' work as a way to conclude their digressive reflections on the demands of art-making. The Old Place, which was commissioned by New York's Museum of Modern Art, unfolds as a duet of commentary as Godard and Mieville move through a dense weave of sounds, sights and texts gathered from the histories of film, painting, photography, sculpture, literature, music and philosophy. Across their 'exercises in artistic thinking', they mount a defence of

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T A FEW CRUCIAL JUNCTURES

Jorge Luis Borges & Margarita Guerrero. Manual de zoologia fantdstica. Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura Econ6mica, 1 9 5 7 ·

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard fi gurative art over abstraction, describe artistic thought as an ethics of attention to quotidian detail and argue that art must constantly square itself with historical reality. Jerry White regards The Old Place as a visually rich but incoherent work that wallows in despair and defeatism (pp. 1 5 2-54) . A sombre mood indeed abounds, but the video ends with a utopian coda-borrowed from Borges-which alludes in partly melancholic, partly affirming ways to the tripartite relationship between Godard, Mieville and the spectator whose co­ involvement they seek. For this final 'exercise', the co-directors use both found and newly produced images to illustrate a tale about a mysterious crea­ ture called the 'A Bao A Qu'. As Mieville's voice, speaking in French, tells us, the creature resides in a remote tower from which a travel­ ler who reaches the top of a winding staircase can view 'the most marvellous landscape in the world'. According to the tale, the A Bao A Qu lies in a dormant, all but imperceptible state at the lowermost step until a visitor approaches and ascends the stairs. When this hap­ pens, the creature follows close behind and gradually assumes a more conspicuous form, its tentacles giving off a bluish glow. The creature attains its fullest shape at the top of the stairs and becomes able to see with its entire body, but it recoils back into nothingness as soon as the visitor recedes down the stairs. The legend holds that only a spiritually evolved being can reach the top and bring the creature into its full existence, an event that has occurred just once in centu­ ries. When Mieville finishes reciting this obscure tale, Godard says that they have chosen to end with it because it 'perfectly' sum­ marises the aims of their video, but he offers no further clarification. The source from which this legend is taken, without direct ac­ knowledgment, is Jorge Luis Borges' El libro de las seres imaginarios ( 1 967), an expanded version of a volume published in 1 95 7 , Manual de zoologia fantdstica. Co-written with Margarita Guerrero, The Book of Imaginary Beings is a playful encyclopaedia of creatures conceived in literature and folklore from around the world. The A Bao A Qu, perhaps the most metaphysical of the animals in this bestiary, ap­ pears as the first of over one hundred entries. Compared to Godard's other late-stage borrowings from the oeuvre of Borges, this refer­ ence is rather hard to decipher. The first-time viewer is likely to be aggravated by Godard's unexplained claim as to its key relevance. How does it shed light on the video's themes and 'exercises' ?

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard One might argue that this story, as Godard and Mieville make use of it, has chiefly to do with the relationship they aim to build with the spectator through their ' artistic thinking' . It serves as an allegory for the tacit interaction between the two filmmakers and the viewer they indirectly address through their reflections, that is, the 'visitor' . The A Bao A Qu's excitement and radiant transformation upon the approach of another testifies to the energetic bond that extends, at least potentially, from the filmmakers to us. The creature evokes a mutually constitutive relationship arising in and through our critical encounter with their work-a relationship that demands not just that we exercise judgement and imaginative, constructive thought in the face of the half-developed arguments they offer, but also that we acquire the perceptual skills at the core of their essayistic method. The tale is made to bear out in a poetic register both the pros­ pect of a stunning revelation ('the most marvellous landscape in the world') and the arduous nature of the joint task, which is replete with difficulties and threatened by encroaching forces. Images used in the exercise, from the 'No Trespassing' sign in Citizen Kane ( 1 94 1 ) t o a n actual sign i n rural Switzerland which declares 'Property o f the State', remind us that there are larger powers obstructing this work. The suggestion is that these forces have fenced off the tower, pre­ venting contact between visitors and the diminished creature inside. If melancholy imbues this ending, there remains a glimmer of possible renewal. The story complements an earlier remark in The Old Place which is voiced by Mieville over video footage of two museum visitors who searchingly caress a Rodin sculpture: 'One is in the other, the other is in the one, and these are three persons', which Godard erroneously attributes to the author Leon Brunschvicg, although this author's volume DESCARTES AND PASCAL, READERS OF MONTAIGNE (p. 2 1 0) was surely Godard's source for this quotation of Pascal. The A Bao A Qu legend may indicate what Godard-Mieville view as the ultimate defeat of their artistic enterprise, but it also re­ affirms possibilities of togetherness and perceptual sharing which are still within reach, if one engages their work diligently enough. Rick Warner Jorge Luis Borges & Margarita Guerrero. The Book of Imaginary Beings, 2 00 5 .

. El libro de los seres imaginarios, r 967. . Le Livre des etres imaginaires, 1 987. Jerry White. Two Bicycles, 2 0 1 3 . ---

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J ORGE LU I S BORG ES Interview

EAN-LUC GODARD 's

Les Carabiniers ( 1 963) opens on a card, handwritten by the director, which reads: 'The more I write, the more I tend to simplicity. I use the most worn-out meta­ phors. In the end, that is what is eternal: the stars resemble the eyes, for example, or death is like sleep. (Borges)' . There follows a hand­ written title card before the action begins, onto which Godard has squeezed every credit for the film. The initial card's connection to the film is difficult to discern, unless Godard is simply pointing up his fable's status as metaphor, something he signals again with his opening shots of the Paris ring road, taken from the jeep we see in the following shot, now in the film's imaginary kingdom. The card has the air of being a sudden whim, as indeed it surely was: Jorge Luis Borges' remark appears in a book of interviews with literary figures printed just four weeks before Godard's film was released, Madeleine Chapsal's Fifteen Writers, reprinted in 1 97 3 as Writers in Person (p. 59), although he may also have seen it in the Paris newspaper L'Express six weeks before that. \Vhat is peculiar about this seemingly banal comment by Borges is that he was recycling a remark made in an essay dating from 1 948, reprinted in his 1 9 5 2 collection OTHER INQUISITIONS, translated into French in 1 95 7 · This earlier remark has a startling connection to Godard's work. After making a similar point about worn-out meta­ phors in that text, concerning the seventeenth-century Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, Borges opines that with his rej ection of meta­ phor Quevedo 'forgot that the metaphor is the momentary contact of two images, not the methodical likening of two things' ( 1 964, p. 3 9). By 1 965, Godard was quoting from another text in Borges' book in Alphaville: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution. Perhaps his encounter with the 1 963 interview prompted him to pick up the vol­ ume, or perhaps he recalled its use as a prop in JACQUES RIVETTE's film Paris Belongs to Us ( 1 95 7-6 1), itself curiously 'Borgesian' (a popular term for the author's labyrinthine narratives of recondite causality). Rivette, however, was unfamiliar with the book Suzanne Schiffman placed in his film. Thus while Borges was quite in vogue in French literary circles in the late l 95os-earlier than in the English-speaking

J

Entretien: Jorge Luis Borges. L'Express, 2 1 February 1 96 3 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard world-he was slow coming to the attention of Godard and his circle. And as Edgardo Cozarinsky remarks, little did the Nouvelle Vague directors realise when they discovered him that Borges, in the 1 93 0s, had been an occasional film critic, like them defending Hollywood genre films such as Josef von Sternberg's early work (p. 88). More than that, Cozarinsky argues, Borges' very conception of literary narrative was greatly influenced by classical film narrative (pp. 9ff)­ as the Nouvelle Vague's own experimental film narratives would be. 'Perhaps universal history is the history of a few metaphors' ( 1 964, p. 6), Borges wrote in 1 95 1 , and this rhetorical device com­ manded his attention all his life. Living in Europe in the l 9 r os and 2 0s, Borges was involved in Spanish Ultraism, for which metaphor was the central poetic technique. Since Cubist collage, one of the cornerstones of early twentieth-century modernism, metaphor had been very much present in the artistic avant-garde of the day, also taken up in literature by Surrealists such as ARAGON. Ronald ]. Christ connects Borges to Cubism in the way his work interleaves the fac­ tual or historical with the fictional or fantastic; Cubism, for Christ, 'exhibits simultaneously the fact of the object perceived and the fiction of its unseen extension' (p. r o6). As a counterpoint to Borges' formulation 'metaphor is the mo­ mentary contact of two [unlike] images', consider the definition of the image from 1 9 1 8 by PIERRE REVERDY, whom Godard also quotes and with whom Borges was familiar, as 'bringing together two rela­ tively distant realities' (p. 495). Is metaphor, in which we employ Aristotle's 'eye for resemblances', thus not exclusively a speech act, but also the province of sight? We might think that Godard not only juxtaposes images to create metaphors-a technique that reaches its zenith in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), where metaphor runs amok-but that he also views the image itself as a metaphor. For while Godard subscribes entirely to the view that the cin­ ematic image is a transcription of reality with immutable truth value, a credo of ANDRE BAZIN, who rejected montage as tied up with meta­ phor, he also believes that this image has a metaphorical relation with reality. Unlike literary description, the image's status as an im­ pression of reality means that ' [when cinema was invented] there was always something that was at least double-and when someone watched it became triple' (p. 2 1 7). An image itself is metaphorical, and the viewer inevitably adds another layer of metaphor by looking

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for resemblances between this impression of reality and his or her own experience of it. Godard would work this process, and compli­ cate it, by loading his images with extraneous matter such as con­ sumer detritus and other art forms to create collage and thus meta­ phor within the frame. This staged impression-image could then be juxtaposed with one of Reverdy's 'distant realities' to create another degree of metaphorical meaning. Godard's supreme stylistic device, montage-or rather Aragon's collage-may thus not be an end in itself but rather a way to create metaphor: ' [to see] not things, but the connection between things' (p. 2 l 8). In his 2 0 1 4 film Adieu au langage, structured by alternating sec­ tions entitled 'Nature' and 'Metaphor', Godard asks: what is the dif­ ference between a metaphor and an idea? None, it would seem, for Godard, who has also said of an idea that 'there is no opposite of an idea. So an idea goes everywhere' (p. 5 1 ). One of the appeals of meta­ phor as a rhetorical figure is the way it can go anywhere and open onto unlimited interpretive possibilities. In a lecture on metaphor in 1 967, Borges noted that most metaphors 'can be traced back to a few simple patterns', but that 'every time the pattern is used, the varia­ tion is different'. He then held out the possibility that 'it may also be given to us to invent metaphors that do not belong . . . to accepted patterns' (2oooB, pp. 40---4 1). When Godard remarks about Adolf Hitler that you can 'take anyone, even an old lady, even a baby, and put a little moustache here and a little hairpiece there, right away people will say: "It's him ! " ' , and then adds 'so the conclusion is . . . we must all be like him a little' (p. 3 09), he is enacting the infinite variability of metaphor and the ability to create new ones, with all their power to unsettle, which Borges describes. Timothy Barnard Madeleine Chapsal. Les Ecrivains en personne ( 1 963), 1 9 7 3 · Jorge Luis Borges. Other Inquisitions 1937-1 952 < 1 95 2 >, 1 964.

. This Craft of Verse, 2 000B. Ronald ]. Christ. The Narrow Act, l 969. Edgardo Cozarinsky. Borges inland/on Film < 1 974/ r 98 1 >, 1 98 8 . Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television ---

< 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Pierre Reverdy. L'lmage ( 1 9 1 8), 2 0 1 0.

BERT OLT BREC HT Notes on the O pera Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonny ( 1 967), Guillaume Gean-Pierre Leaud) stands before a blackboard on which are written the names of thirty­ nine great playwrights. One by one, he rubs them out, begin­ ning with JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. The only name not erased is that of Bertolt Brecht, the playwright, theatre director and theorist who, along with Erwin Piscator, revolutionised German theatre in the 1 92 0s. After his premature death in 1 956 Brecht's work had a dual afterlife: his plays conquered the world, and his name christened a new, modernist cinema, from France and Germany to Cuba, Brazil and Japan. At the head of this 'Brechtian cinema', which sought to break the dream factory's spell by, among other things, foreground­ ing the work's construction and denying audience identification with the film's characters through Brecht's signature concept Verfremdung ('distancing' or 'alienation'), stood Jean-Luc Godard. And yet Godard came to Brecht late, demonstrating the Nou­ velle Vague's distance from French theatre circles, in which Brecht was all the rage by the late 1 9 50s. Godard discovered him only in 1 96 1 , through a production of The Resistable Rise ofArturo Ui ( 1 94 1 ) (when, h e relates, h e also discovered the theatre i n general), having missed earlier Parisian performances such as Brecht's 1 954 Berliner Ensemble production in German of Mother Courage and Her Children ( 1 93 9), which had such a profound effect on Roland Barthes. God­ ard's belated encounter with the playwright would give a marked Brechtian flavour to Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962) and Les Carabiniers ( 1 963). Cahiers du Cinema, under new editor fare ROHMER, had caught up to the trend in l 960 with a handful of texts by and about Brecht, but this likely had little impact on Godard: the articles on Brecht were by individuals far from Godard's orbit Goseph Losey, film critic Louis Marcorelles and theatre critic Bernard Dort, later a fierce critic of Godard), while two texts by Brecht, around the adaptation of The Threepenny Opera ( 1 9 2 8) by G.W Pabst ( 1 9 3 l ) , did not articulate his most important theories, most of which were not yet available in French (the 'Notes' on Mahagonny appeared in 1 963).

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N LA CHINOISE

Bertolt Brecht & Peter Suhrkamp. Zur Soziologie der Oper­ Anmerkungen zu 'Mahagonny' . Musik und Gesellschaft l , no. 4 (August 1 9 3 0), r n5-1 2 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

75

Rohmer's editorial indicated the challenge Brecht posed for the Nouvelle Vague. Rohmer also recognised that the Brechtian film criticism propounded by Dort would 'discredit pretty much every­ thing we have loved and love: authors, films and our approach to them' (p. 2 ). And yet by the end of the decade Godard had renounced the journal's 'politique des auteurs' or 'authorship doctrine', and his own name, to form the Dziga Vertov Group, a collective for creating new cinematic forms and content in a radically Brechtian vein. At the tail end of that experiment Godard and his young partner, Jean-Pierre Gorin, returned to narrative feature filmmaking under their own names with the explicitly Brechtian aim of creating didactic entertainment. Tout va bien ( 1 972) is the fable of a wildcat occupation of a sausage factory by its workers, who hold hostage a left-liberal bourgeois couple (the mega-stars Yves Montand and Jane Fonda). Through Montand's character Jacques, a washed-up Nouvelle Vague filmmaker now making commercials, the film signals that it is guided by Brecht's notes to his and the composer Kurt Weill's 1 9 3 0 satirical opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Brecht's most widely­ read text and a succinct summary of his theatre's theoretical prin­ ciples. These 'Notes' provide us with a handy schema contrasting dramatic theatre and Brecht's 'epic' theatre: one enables viewers to have feelings, while the other forces them to make decisions; in one the viewer shares the experience, in the other the viewer studies it from outside; in the former, scenes follow one another in sequence, in the latter each scene is independent (p. 65). The strategy Brecht and Weill devised for achieving these goals was described by the former as the 'radical separation of elements': 'words, music and set design had to be made more independent of one another'. This would undo their 'smelting' in dramatic thea­ tre, which degrades each element and melts the passive viewer down with them (pp. 65 , 66) . Given that Brecht and Weill's Mahagonny and their smash hit The Threepenny Opera were, in fact, not plays but operas which also incorporated many elements extraneous to the stage, it might be more appropriate to speak here of a multiplication of elements: dialogue, song, music, projected images (Piscator had gone so far as to project films onto the backdrop), banners, visible production machinery, on-stage orchestras, etc. Virtually all these would find their way into Tout va bien, along with various Brechtian devices such as workers addressing the camera directly.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Godard had always practised a broadly tableau-style construc­ tion, as Barthes recognised in Brecht (pp. 7 1-7 2), to break up clas­ sical narrative sequencing. Here he and Gorin devised an ingenious set, cribbed from the 1 96 1 Jerry Lewis film The Ladies Man: a giant doll-house-like factory cut away on one side. This made it possible to film the action in each room as an autonomous tableau, but also to track from one tableau to another or dolly back and show sev­ eral simultaneously. It was a solution both theatrical and cinematic, achieving what neither could on its own. The film also replicates Brecht's banners and scrawled slogans and even shows us the cost of every part of its production. In his 'Notes', co-authored by Peter Suhrkamp, a word of great import appeared for the first time in Brecht, a year after Weill in­ troduced it: Gestus. Brecht stressed the need for his actors to reject conventional attempts to inhabit their character, which leads to audience identification. For Brecht, Gestus is a gesture with a social dimension, not an individual one. It is not a dramatic gesture, ex­ pressing an individual's inner truth, but an action impressed by soci­ ety on the individual and revealing a social truth. To this end Godard physically pounded the theatricality out of his stars' acting, leaving only the social Gestus. In 1 978 he remarked of movie stars-the most recent he had worked with were Montand and Fonda-that they are 'like cancer, a kind of proliferation of the individual' (p. 59). To suppress this in Tout va bien, he has Montand carry out the exhaust­ ing work of carving up hog carcasses with a giant circular saw in a real slaughterhouse, and makes Fonda bend over a vat of offal and haul it out by the bare handful before working on a sausage-making machine. All this was Brecht with a grim-and MAOIST-post-May l 968 vengeance. Timothy Barnard Bertolt Brecht. Notes on the Opera Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonny,

2015. ---

. Notes sur !'opera Grandeur e t decadence de la ville de Mahagonny, 1 979·

Bertolt Brecht and Peter Suhrkamp. Anmerkungen zur Oper Aufstieg und

Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 1 99 i . Roland Barthes. Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein < 1 973>, 1 987. Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television

< 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. E ric Rohmer. E ditorial, 1 960.

BERT OLT BREC HT Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things during the 1 960s from a po­ litically and theoretically eclectic figure to a staunch advocate of Marxism-Leninism, Jean-Luc Godard faced a considerable dilemma. Convinced of the value of the Marxist classics, how could he possibly absorb the vast corpus of writings considered de rigueur for any self-respecting revolutionary? Given that he was also engaged in a frenetic bout of militant filmmaking and political activity, his predicament seemed particularly intractable. His solution involved siphoning the accrued knowledge of some erudite Parisian activ­ ists, with Jean Pierre Gorin proving to be a privileged conversation partner. Another crucial element, however, of Godard's crash course in the history of Marxist thought consisted of Bertolt Brecht's sui generis book, Me ti: Buch der Wendungen. Written between 1 9 3 5 and 1 93 9 while Brecht was in exile in Scandinavia, Me-ti: Book ofInterventions in the Flow ofThings (literally the book of turns of events), consists of roughly three hundred brief passages, purportedly a collection of writings by acolytes of the an­ cient Chinese philosopher Mo Di (whose name is also transliterated as Me ti, Mozi or Mo Tzu). Mo Di based his thought on a proto­ dialectical theory of universal flux, and his opposition to Confucian­ ism led to the suppression of his writings in imperial China. Brecht's familiarity with Chinese philosophical texts dates back to 1 9 20, well before his turn towards Marxism. Later, such works as The Good Person of Szechuan ( 1 943) and the Tui-Novel (posthumous; begun in the 1 93 0s) reinforced his sinophilia. While the text of Me-ti is written in a faux ancient Chinese style, it has little concrete relation to Mo Di's philosophy. Rather, the work is an encoded treatment of Marxist dialectics and modern history, particularly that of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin. Proletarians are renamed 'ploughsmiths'. Communism is 'the Great Order', Marxism the 'Great Method'. Historical individuals receive Chinese sounding pseudonyms: Lenin becomes Mi en leh, Marx Ka meh, Stalin Ni en, and Trotsky To tsi . Politically, the work defends both Marxist theory and Lenin­ ist political practice (and subtly critiques the Soviet Union under Stalin), but it also bears the considerable influence of Karl Korsch,

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N HIS RAPID TRANSFORMATION

Me ti: Buch der Wendungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 96 5 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard a heterodox communist intellectual fundamental to Brecht's school­ ing in the works of Marx and Lenin in the late 1 920s. While it is doubtful that Brecht envisaged releasing these aphoristic passages in published form, they found posthumous publication in German in 1 965, were soon translated into French, and in 2 0 1 6 became avail­ able in English. With its epigrammatic style, Me-ti had obvious appeal for Godard as a primer on Marxist theory. Brecht had long been an important figure for the filmmaker: his poem 'Hollywood' was famously recited by Fritz Lang in Le Mepris ( 1 963), and Les Carabiniers ( 1 963) also bears strong traces of the dramatist's influence. But few commenta­ tors have registered the undeniable importance of Me-ti for Godard. Julia Lesage is a significant exception. She observes that Godard and Gorin 'spent four years reading and discussing Me-ti' and recalls a private discussion with the filmmakers in 1 97 3 , when they reaf­ firmed this book's importance: 'When I pressed to know why, God­ ard replied that it showed the need for a cultural revolution' (p. 54). Elias Sanbar's recollections of shooting the unfinished film 'Jusqu'a la victoire (Methode de pensee et travail de la revolution palestini­ enne)' in the Palestinian territories in 1 969-70 reinforces the book's importance: 'Godard moved around with a lot of books, and at the time Brecht occupied the pride of place in this little itinerant library. Me-ti, Refugee Conversations, a collection of his theoretical writings and his complete poetry were at the top of his reading list' (p. l l 8). Of Godard and Gorin's films at this time, Vladimir et Rosa ( l 97 l ) has some structural parallels with Brecht's text, and the concluding proclamation of Tout va bien ( 1 972)-'Everyone must be their own historian'-echoes a fragment in Me ti entitled 'Individuals also have a history' (p. 1 1 3). But it is Pravda ( 1 969, with Jean-Henri Roger) that contains the most overt use of Me-ti. During the process of edit­ ing Pravda, the footage captured by Godard and Roger in Czecho­ slovakia in June 1 969 was sculpted into a structurally tripartite work that attempts to provide an ideological analysis of the nature of the cinematic image. In the first part of the film, scenes of everyday life in Czechoslovakia are accompanied by a descriptive commentary. But this is soon denounced as superficial and untheorised, no better than 'traveller's impressions, memories like Delacroix in Algeria, like Chris Marker at Rhodiaceta' ( 1 9 7 2 , p. 2 l ) . A 'concrete analysis of the concrete situation' follows in the second part, which underscores

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the 'illness' o f revisionism afflicting the country. The third part, therefore, combines 'a sick image' with 'a sound that is not sick' or, in other words, 'placing a just sound with a false image in order to recover a just image' (p. 2 5). Not only was this approach immediately recognised by God­ ard himself to be overly dogmatic-leading him to label Pravda a 'garbage Marxist-Leninist movie' (Carroll, p. 54)-it is also at odds with Godard's later views on the relations between image, sound and text in the cinema. There is little formal tension here between the footage shown on screen and the Marxist texts read in voice-over. Alongside quotations from MAO and Engels, this segment includes a lengthy, slightly rewritten extract from Me-ti, which the book titles 'Do your own thing and let nature do the same' (pp. 1 1 9-2 1 ) . This passage, read by a female voice ('Rosa') to the accompaniment of im­ ages of stultified Czech farmers joylessly tilling fields, relates Mi en leh/Lenin's post-revolutionary political strategy towards the peas­ antry in 'the land of Tsen' (changed to 'the countries of the Danube' in the film). Brecht hereby defends the early Bolshevik policy of attempt­ ing to align poor peasants with the proletariat against wealthier sec­ tions of the peasantry, while refraining from peremptory mass scale collectivisation of landholdings. He concludes: 'Mi-en-leh [Lenin] realised his program by doing his own thing and letting nature do the same' (p. 1 2 1 ). While presented as a 'true text' in Pravda, Rosa's voice-over is interrupted at several points by 'Vladimir', a male voice-over exhorting her: 'Do not content yourself with true texts on false images, do not be satisfied with these necessary but insufficient relations between images and sounds' (p. 2 8). Pravda was considered a failure, but in its use of texts such as Me-ti, the film points towards the more complex montage structures of Vent d'est ( 1 970), Lotte in Italia ( 1 970) and, indeed, much of Godard's later work. Daniel Fairfax Bertolt Brecht. Bertolt Brecht's Me-Ti: Book ofInterventions in the Flow of Things, 2 0 1 6. ---

. Me Ti: Livre de retournements, 1 99 7 ·

Kent E. Carroll. Film and Revolution, 1 97 2 . Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Henri Roger. Pravda (bande paroles), 1 97 2 . Julia Lesage. Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1 98 3 . Elias Sanbar. Vingt et un ans apres, 1 99 1 .

ROBERT BRES S ON Notes on the Cinematograph Robert Bresson was part of a cinematic pantheon that included ROBERTO ROSSELLINI. Fi lms such as Diary of a Country Priest ( 1 9 5 1) and Pickpocket ( 1 959) estab­ lished Bresson's place alongside the latter as a director who com­ bined documentary-like treatment of the real with a unique autho­ rial style-'I'm obsessed with the real. Down to the smallest detail', he told Jean-Luc Godard in 1 966 (2 0 1 6A, p. 1 42). In a dictionary of French filmmakers that appeared in 1957 as part of a special issue of Cahiers du Cinema, Godard wrote the entry for Bresson, which opens with the claim that Bresson's status in French cinema equals that of DOSTOEVSKY in Russian literature or Mozart in German music. For the rest of the entry Godard quotes a series of Bressonian aphorisms, including: 'The film is a perfect example of the work which demands a style; it needs an author, a signature' ( 1 986F, p. 47). Long before Bresson published Notes sur le cinimatographe-his book-length col­ lection of aphorisms on the art of filmmaking-Godard recognised his ability to distil the subject into insightful sententiae, something in which Godard also excelled, albeit in a much different register. Notes on the Cinematograph contains approximately four hun­ dred entries recording Bresson's thoughts on filmmaking. Most date from the 1 950s, when he was perfecting his craft. Some could seem­ ingly have been uttered by Godard a decade later: 'don't run after poetry. It penetrates unaided through the joins (ellipses)' (p. 2 1 ). Throughout the book, Bresson denigrates the term 'cinema', pre­ ferring, with JEAN COCTEAU, to call the true art form after one of the devices invented to make it, the cinimatographe, misleadingly rendered 'cinematography' in the English translation. (The title of the English translation, now in its third edition, has finally adopted 'Cinematograph' to translate this term, after mistakenly employing 'Cinematography' and 'Cinematographer' in its previous editions.) For Bresson, the word 'cinema' connotes mainstream motion pic­ tures, mere photographed theatre. He got his start as a painter, and his passion for it runs through Notes on the Cinematograph. His pervasive interest in music also shows, although he abhorred non­ diegetic music in film.

F

OR JEAN-LUC GODARD,

Notes sur le cinimatographe. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 7 5 ·

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

81

Despite Godard's attraction to Bresson's aphorisms, their film­ making style differs in many respects. Godard's prolific nature let him be discursive and digressive; Bresson's comparatively minuscule output denied him the luxury of digression. Yet there is pithiness in Godard's work as well. In his talks in Montreal in 1 978, Godard called the film trailer the 'perfect film', provocatively asserting: 'I'd rather make trailers than films' (2 0 1 4, p. 1 8 1). Godard entered the genre in 1 967 with a trailer for Bresson's Mouchette, an experience he would not acknowledge until 2006, but one that reinforces his affin­ ity to Bresson. With a generous helping of characteristic intertitles, Godard made Bresson's ellipses and fragments his own. Godard featured a copy of Notes on the Cinematograph in Eloge de l'amour (200 1 ) . In one scene, Elle (Cecile Camp) holds a copy of Bresson's Notes, characterising it as a primer on the subject of cin­ ema. She then reads aloud reworked aphorisms from the book: 'it's not a question of directing someone but of directing oneself'. Elle flips a few pages and then reads another one of Bresson's aphorisms: 'be sure to exhaust what can be communicated by stillness and silence'. She reads one further item before she is through: 'let feelings bring about events, not the contrary' (pp. 5, 1 6, 2 1 ; 2 02 2 , pp. 3 8 1 -8 2). Godard applied Bresson in a more pervasive yet more subtle way in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98) . Chapter I A, 'Toutes les histoires' ( l 989/ 98), opens with Godard's voice-over of a slightly reworded ver­ sion of another one of Bresson's aphorisms: 'don't show all sides of things. A margin of indefiniteness'. Not only is Godard's first verbal utterance adapted from Bresson's Notes, so is his second: 'let nothing be changed and [everything] be different' (pp. 64, 87; l 998A, vol. 1 , pp. l 5 , l 7 ) . (This enigmatic injunction gave Pedro Costa the title of his 2005 film Change Nothing, composed entirely of rehearsals by the singer Jeanne Balibar, with Godard's gravelly whisper repeating these same words dubbed into the mix of her song of the same title [2003] .) These two epigrams play out over the course of Histoire(s) . Chapter l B, 'Une Histoire seule' (1 989/98), begins with the epi­ gram about communicating with stillness and silence ( 1 998A, vol. 1 , p . 1 54) Godard would reuse in Eloge de l'amour. Bresson's words re­ surface throughout Histoire(s) du cinema, sometimes directly quoted, other times paraphrased, and yet other times echoed and re-echoed. As Colin MacCabe observes, 'many of Bresson's epigrams read as perfect summaries of Godard's own aesthetic concerns' (p. 1 8 7). In

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Notes he anticipates Godard's method in Histoire(s) . One of Bresson's injunctions, for example, shows traces of HENRI LANGLOIS, ANDRE MALRAUX and PIERRE REVERDY, especially Reverdy's theory that an image is created by reconciling two distant, yet true realities: 'bring together things that have as yet never been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so', Bresson writes (p. 2 9). Godard recalls this aphorism in Chapter 4B, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998). By the time Notes on the Cinematograph was published in 1 97 5 , Godard was contemplating a return to feature fiction filmmaking after his political and experimental hiatuses. In his talks in Montreal in 1 97 8 he was obsessed with and bedevilled by the question of working with actors in fiction. Bresson's early influence, the use of 'models' stripped of all theatrical posturing (a recurring reference in his 1 960s interviews and later book), had been palpable in Godard's 1 960s films, though by 1 965 he was already calling Bresson's doctrine into question, arguing that he applied the world to an idea of cinema like a mould to matter, or vice versa ( r 986P, pp. 2 1 7- 1 8). This ques­ tioning of the automatism of Bresson's models led to this response to a question in Montreal about whether filmmakers should show 'people who are models' : 'not me, or at least less and less. Because I think what you have to show is that there is no model. There is modelling, but no model . . . something like the correct way of look­ ing' (20 1 4, p. 1 7 1 ). Describing models as 'objectified', he then em­ ployed characteristic Godardian word play to detect an authoritarian impulse in their use. Bresson had written: 'Model. Closed, does not enter into communication with the outside world except unawares' (p. 64). It is precisely an awareness of this communication which Godard has always sought to instil in his models. Kevin ]. Hayes Robert Bresson. Notes on the Cinematograph, 2 0 1 6 . ---

---

. Notes sur le cinematographe, 1 99 5 · . Bresson o n Bresson , 2 0 1 6A.

Jean-Luc Godard. Dictionary of French Filmmakers < 1 95 7>, l 986F. ---

. Let's Talk about Pierrot < 1 96p, l 986P.

. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. --- . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. . JLG/JLG et azttres textes, 2 0 2 2 . Colin MacCabe. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, 2003 . ---

---

ANDR E BRET ON Nadja

E HEN ANDR BRETON'S

Nadja appeared in May 1 9 2 8 , its mix of fiction, memoir and lyrical essay featured an in­ terplay of word and image. Much as the forty-two illus­ trations in Nadja raise questions concerning the nature of narrative, Jean-Luc Godard's films often draw on words-frequently images of words handwritten by Godard himself-to ponder the nature of cin­ ema. Anecdotal links between Godard and Breton are minimal. Both are said to have attended screenings that HENRI LANGLOIS organised at the Cinematheque frarn;aise in Paris starting in 1 948. Rumour has it that Breton, the leading figure in the Surrealist movement since the early 1 92 0s, was also present a decade earlier at screenings of the Cinematheque's precursor, Le Cercle du Cinema. Nadja was among the handful of books that Godard gave to Anne Wiazemsky on their first date in 1 966. It was happenstance, of course: he ducked into a bookstore while strolling the streets with her and came out with Nadja and a couple of other books. Godard quotes from Nadja in Bande a part ( 1 964) when Franz (Sarni Frey) reads aloud from a novel whose central figure, he says, reminds him of Odile (Anna Karina), a young woman whom he and his friend Arthur (Claude Brasseur) have enlisted to steal a bundle of cash from a house on the outskirts of Paris where she lives with her aunt. The passage in question relates a 'moving, stupid and sombre tale' (pp. l 5 5-56) about a Monsieur Delouit who asks a hotel clerk to remind him of his room number every time he checks in because he has no memory. A minute after Delouit checks in and asks for his room number, an unrecognisable man with a bloodied face enters, saying that he is Delouit. When the clerk says that Delouit had just gone upstairs, the man explains that he had fallen out of the window. He asks the clerk for the number of his room. Franz's reading of the passage from Nadja expresses his projec­ tion of Odile as a mix of innocence and mystery, despite the fact that the book Arthur is holding as he reads is ODILE, a l 93 7 novel by one-time Surrealist Raymond Queneau. The name Odile departs not only from the character for whom Breton named his narrative, but also from that of the character Karen in Dolores Hitchens' 1 95 8

W

Nadja. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 2 8 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard crime novel Fools' Gold, from which Godard drew freely as a source. From Karen to Odile via Nadja, this name game enhances the aura of inter-war Paris and its outskirts evoked by Godard through inter­ textual reference to Breton and Queneau. Finally, the second-remove quotation of Nadja via Odile is an example of the method Godard described in a 1 985 interview when he remarked that there was not one word of his own in Detective ( l 98 5), because moments of urgency require one to draw from one's storehouse ( 1 998s, p. 7 8). Nadja's account of a chance encounter between a narrator named Andre and a woman who calls herself Nadja is enhanced by photographs of people, artworks and street scenes. Breton's verbal and visual evocations of Parisian locales transform the city and its outskirts into a mythic landscape whose meaning Andre-with help from Nadja-tries to decipher among signs of the marvellous in everyday life. Nadja equates the mysteries of Paris and those of a woman whose literary forebear may well be the anonymous passer-by in CHARLES BAUDELAIRE'S poem 'To a Passer-by' . This figurative equation of Paris and woman continues in Une Femme est une femme ( 1 96 1 ), filmed near the Right Bank neighbour­ hood seen in Jacques-Andre Boiffard's photograph of the Porte Saint-Denis that Breton had included in Nadja. Une Femme est une femme centres on Angela (Karina), a young striptease performer who wants to become pregnant. When her live-in fiance Emile CTean­ Claude Brialy) hesitates, she calls on his best friend Alfred Lubitsch Gean-Paul Belmondo), who is happy to fulfil her request. Godard punctuates these narrative elements with observational segments of Parisian streets that recall those in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's 1 96 1 cinema-verite documentary Chronique d'un ite. Location shooting already integral to Godard's A bout de souffie ( 1 960) likewise pervades Montparnasse-Levallois ( 1 965), for which Godard replaced his preferred cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, with the American documentarian Albert Maysles, known at the time for his work in direct cinema. Three years later, the final pro­ noun in Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle refers simultaneously to the Parisian region and to the film's female protagonist Juliette Jean­ son (Marina Vlady) . The co-existence of documentary and fiction in Godard's Parisian films of the late 1 950s to the early 1 960s can be seen as drawing on Nadja's account of its first-person narrator walking through the city with a mysterious woman as his guide. All

AND R E B R E T O N o f which leads one t o ponder the possibility that Juliette Jeanson in Deux ou trois choses is a cinematic descendant of the Nadja whom Godard references via Queneau in Bande a part. The topographic imperative in Nouvelle Vague and cinema verite films noted above was facilitated by advances in portable sound and audio recording equipment. In Bande a part, sequences of Odile, Franz and Arthur running through the Louvre or driving through Paris and its outskirts configure Paris in bits and pieces. This frag­ mentation recalls Breton's habit of walking into a movie theatre after a film had started, and another of hopping on a whim from one movie theatre to the other (habits which by many accounts Godard shared; the director himself told MARGUERITE DURAS 'I've never seen films in their entirety; I've always seen them in pieces and moments' [p. 84]). T. Jefferson Kline notes that events in Godard's loose ad­ aptation of Fools' Gold 'almost never follow logically from one to the next, but seem rather an assemblage of moments, none of which adequately explains or prepares for the others' (p. 1 7 2). One of Godard's very first texts, a review ofJoseph Mankiewicz's 1 949 film House of Strangers, ends with the following comparison: 'Might Mankiewicz not make films-much as Breton makes books­ for no other reason than to stage an encounter? ' ( 1 998B, p. 72). In such terms, La Bande a part can be understood as an example of Godard's predilection for making films that stage encounters on the streets of Paris much as Breton's narrator had recounted his initial encounter with Nadja nearly four decades earlier on the Right Bank. In this vein, the poet and art critic Alain Jouffroy described God­ ard's Masculin Feminin: 1 5 faits precis ( 1 966) as 'inventing imaginary reportage in reality or real reportage in the imagination: it is to nar­ rative cinema what Breton's Nadja was to the novel' (2 0 1 0, p. 3 07). Steven Ungar Andre Breton. Nadja, l 960. ---

. Nadja, 1 988.

Antoine de Baecque. Godard: Biographie, 2 0 1 0. Marguerite Duras & Jean-Luc Godard. Dialogues, 2 0 1 4. Jean-Luc Godard. Joseph Manlciewicz, La Maison des etrangers (House of

Strangers) ( 1 950), l 998B. ---

. La Guerre et la paix ( 1 985), l 998s.

T. Jefferson Kline. Bande(s) a part, 2 0 1 4.

HERM ANN BROC H The Death of Virgil Jean-Luc Godard, recurring references to The Death of Virgil, the novel by Austrian author Hermann Broch, are not merely quotations; they also have autobiographi­ cal value. As Godard has acknowledged, Broch is an author who left a mark on both his adolescence and his subsequent intellectual de­ velopment, as did Robert Musil and THOMAS MANN. Godard's taste for German-language literature of the nineteenth and early twen­ tieth centuries-'devouring' these authors as a teenager ( 1 998w, p. 432)-came from his father. Having briefly quoted The Death of Virgil in Soft and Hard: Soft Talk on a Hard Subject between Two Friends ( 1 98 5 , with Anne-Marie Mieville) and Soigne ta droite, ou Une Place sur la terre ( 1 987), God­ ard made extensive use of the novel in Chapter 2 B , 'Fatale beaute' ( 1 998), of Histoire (s) du cinema ( 1 989/98). In three close-up shots, Sabine Azema, dressed in black and sporting a Louise Brooks hair­ style, recites six lyrical fragments from the novel's second chapter, 'Fire-The Descent', but they are presented in a different order than they appear in the book ( 1 998A, vol. 2 , pp. 1 7 1 -8 1 ). The scene is framed to highlight only Azema's face in a sharp, cold and rudimentary composition in which all that is visible are a few flowers and leaves of a plant to the left, the bottom part of a small painting on the wall above her head, a lamp casting a yellowish light on the actress's face and venetian blinds drawn against a win­ dow in the background. It is an elegantly anonymous space, possibly an office at Peripheria, the small film production company run by Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville when the scene was filmed in the late 1 980s. Initially, no superimposed images interrupt the actress's face or overlap the sound of her voice. Such images do appear in the pauses between one shot and the next: in the first, a detail from Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Bolt ( 1 7 7 7) leads to a black-and-white photograph of Lillian Gish. Between the second and third shots a black-and-white photograph of Anne-Marie Mieville appears. The lines from Broch thus open a breathing space in Histoire(s) du cinema: these are the words of an exiled writer. Broch began

I

N THE CINEMA OF

The Death a/ Virgil, trans. Jean Starr Untermeyer. New York: Pantheon, 1 945 ·

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard writing the novel in Austria when he was a prisoner of the Nazis and finished it in exile in the United States, where it was first pub­ lished, in English, in 1 945 , before being published in German in 1 947· Broch's life straddled the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his books often tackled the drama of the debasement of values in contemporary society. His work includes the trilogy of novels The Sleepwalkers ( 1 9 3 0- 3 2) and plays such as The Atonement ( 1 9 34). The Czech novelist Milan Kundera remarked that 'Musil and Broch sad­ dled the novel with enormous responsibilities. They saw it as the supreme intellectual synthesis, the last place where one could still question the world as a whole. They were convinced that the novel had tremendous synthetic power, that it could be poetry, fantasy, philosophy, aphorism and essay all rolled into one' (p. 1 09). In The Death of Virgil, lyrical fragments alternate with prose run through with philosophical implications in a flow that adopts Virgil's subjec­ tivity, his interiority and his perception of reality. Broch identified with Virgil, who approached death having lost all certainty of his role as a poet and sensing that his most important work, The Aeneid, was a failure. Although The Aeneid had achieved beauty, Virgil wanted to burn it because he was convinced that its sole aim had been to serve the empire, not truth. Beauty, for Godard, is fatal because of the magnetic power of its aura, but it is compro­ mised by the frailty of the body and, inexorably, by the menace of imminent death. From The Death of Virgil, a mixture of poetry and prose, though leaning more heavily towards the latter, Godard takes the lyric frag­ ments in which the author defines the Platonic nature of beauty as reminiscence, as 'Creation delivered from form', which the self con­ templates in a prenatal condition 'without fate? Oh it existed I And without dream it was, neither a waking nor a sleep I Only a moment, a song, once only I The voice unique' (p. 206; l 998A, vol. 2 , p. l 7 l ). Beauty is thus the 'unreal element' of a distant world 'brought into proximity', precisely because it arouses in the self the inner and profound memory of a condition which precedes consciousness, of a primal dimension of being, 'a reversion to the pre-divine': the ab­ solute harmony of form (pp. l l 7- l 8). Beauty, 'a bewitchment', also has a diabolical power. Broch speaks of 'enchanting and enchanted beauty I demonically absorbing everything' with poise that is 'Satur­ nian' (p. l 1 8). Melancholic and just, it reminds us of an ideal we have

88

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

lost forever, from which we are definitively excluded and which we can only regret. For humankind, 'irretrievable is that smile in which we were once embedded', or rather irretrievable is the 'fullness of being on awakening or just before awakening', as is 'that tranquillity into which we were wont to bury our face' (p. 2 0 8 ). Histoire(s) du cinema is replete with this sense of loss, which above all invests the cinema, the art which failed its own role in history: it had the ability to denounce the horror of the Holocaust in time but did not do so. In melancholy, which for Broch seals the awareness of man's defeat and 'exile', beauty is the 'essence of the play, the game' , in or­ der that 'symbolically-since otherwise it was impossible-he might escape his fear of loneliness, repeating the beautiful self-deception again and again, the flight into beauty, the game of flight' (p. 1 2 2 ). Beauty then becomes a game and a form of escape, over which hovers 'art's despair I its despairing attempt I to build up the imperishable from things that perish, from words, from sounds, from stones, from colours, so that space, being formed, might outlast time' (p. 1 2 2 ) . At the conclusion of the novel, Broch describes the death of Vir­ gil, who yields to the plea of the emperor Augustus not to destroy his poem because the work carries out a function of exalting his lineage and the empire's 'mission' . Virgil is liberated only in the ecstasy of death, which returns him to his primal pure state. Analogically, in Histoire (s) there returns the leitmotif of art (the cinema) becoming an industry of death because it serves power. To the question that torments Virgil, whether or not to burn his work, Godard responds ideally, paraphrasing ANDRE MALRAUX: 'Films should be burned . . . But be careful with the fire within . . . Art is like fire, it is born of what it burns' ( 1 998A, vol. 2 , p. 1 65). Roberto Chiesi Hermann Broch. The Death of Virgil, 1 99 5 ·

--- . Der To d des Vergil, 202 2 . --- . La Mort de Virgile, 1 980. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. --- . Les Livres et moi ( 1 997), l 998w. Christian Salmon. Milan Kundera: The Art of Fiction, l 984.

,

LEON BRU NS C HV I C G Descartes and Pascal, Readers ofMontaigne Alphaville: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 96 3), Lemmy (Eddie Constantine) quotes a one-line fragment from Blaise Pascal's Pensies ( 1 670): 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread' (p. 66) . The fragment seems to fit perfectly with the film's inter-galactic theme. But Pascal's concern was not with space, rather with the self. Elsewhere in the Pensies he remarks: 'When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after . . . engulfed in the infinite im­ mensity of spaces of which I am ignorant . . . I am frightened' (p. 6 1 ). The self, an overriding concern of Jean-Luc Godard's own work, is a central theme of Leon Brunschvicg's volume Descartes et Pascal, lecteurs de Montaigne, whose very premise would have appealed to Godard: it reads the seventeenth-century mathematician-philos­ ophers Pascal and RENE DESCARTES reading MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, about whom Godard once remarked: ' Uacques] Lacan, [Louis] Althusser and [Roland] Barthes have been made outmoded by . . . Montaigne' ( 1 998J, p. 2 84), in keeping with his dictum in Sande a part ( 1 964), borrowed from T. S . ELIOT, that the classical is modern. Montaigne's Essays ( 1 5 80) holds clear interest for Godard well be­ yond the ruminative personal essay genre it introduced to modern letters. Montaigne readily avowed his predilection for contradiction, which Godard also cultivates and, with direct reference to Descartes, laments how contemporary society refuses him this stance: 'to live in Europe is to live in a Cartesian system which says that you must not contradict yourself' (201 4, p. 2 2 6) . And although Montaigne was the one non-mathematician among Brunschvicg's three thinkers, some of his turns of phrase-like Godard's witticisms and aphorisms­ have an algebraic perfection, such as this almost flawless phonetic reduplication quoted by Brunschvicg (p. 60): 'nous veillons dormants et veillants dormons'-'asleep we wake and awake we sleep' . Montaigne i s credited with laying the foundations of the mod­ ern sense of self; throughout the Essays' range of topics he insists: 'it is my own self I am painting' (2004, p. 3). Of special relevance here, he practises an art of quotation remarkably similar to Godard's own;

I

N THE FILM

Descartes et Pascal, lecteurs de Montaigne. Neuchatel: E ditions de la Baconniere,

l 942 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard the thoughts of ancient Roman writers pepper his text and, Michael Metschies remarks, 'are sometimes modified, their syntax often switched around, their field of application noticeably shifted'. He also 'considerably reduces their otherness by more or less systemati­ cally eliminating the authors' names', to the extent that Metschies can quote Franc.;oise Joukovsky asking a question familiar to viewers of Godard: 'who is speaking in . . . the Essays? ' (p. 9). Descartes' original intention to publish Discourse on the Method ( 1 63 7) anonymously, an aspiration often shared by Godard, suggests a similarly complex negation of the self while at the same time ac­ cording great importance to its deepest and most intimate aspects­ even in mathematics, as seen in this comment from his Meditations on First Philosophy ( 1 64 1 ) , quoted by Brunschvicg: ' . . . the difference between imagination and pure understanding. When I imagine a triangle, for example, I do not merely understand that it is a figure bounded by three lines, but at the same time I also see the three lines with my mind's eye as if they were present before me; and this is what I call imagining' ( 1 984, p. 50). Although Descartes barely mentions Montaigne in his work, the latter is present everywhere in it, even in the first sentence of the Method-lifted, Brunschvicg believes, from his illustrious predecessor (pp. I I 5- 1 6). Godard began quoting Brunschvicg's book in interviews and films in the late 1 980s, continuing to his most recent work. These references are belated given that the book was recommended to him by his mother in his youth. But Godard also covers his tracks by having Anne-Marie Mieville remark, when she quotes from the book in voice-over in their co-directed film The Old Place: Small Notes Regarding the Arts at Fall of 20th Century ( 1 999), that Brunschvicg was her 'old philosophy teacher' ; in fact, he was Godard's mother's philosophy professor before the war. As in Montaigne, Godard's sources are obscured and personal identities blurred to create an oeuvre which unmistakably constructs and expresses his own identity. The remark Godard attributes to Brunschvicg, 'one is in the oth­ er, the other is in the one, and these are the three persons' , has a kind of Godardian arithmetic, and he appears to be struck by the idea that the identities of these three thinkers, their very selves, intermingle through their quoting and intertextual practices-that one finds the other in oneself. (Pascal: 'It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him' [200 3 , p. l 5] .) The phrase is quoted twice in

L E O N B R U N S C HV I C G Helas pour moi ( 1 99 3 ), a film unsigned by Godard, which plumbs the depths of the self through a story of divine intervention in personal identity: once by Simon Donnadieu (Gerard Depardieu) and once as part of the film's voice-over cacophony. The remark is also given a typically Godardian parsing in a series of intertitles set widely apart in the film, and is quoted yet again in Film Socialisme (2 0 1 0) (p. 5 7) and Adieu au langage (2 0 1 4). In fact, Godard has bent this quotation and its meaning and misattributed its authorship. The line does not come from Brunsch­ vicg himself but, as the author makes clear (p. 2 1 0), from Pascal, who wrote: 'All is one, one is in the other, like the Three Persons' (p. l 34). Pascal is discussing religion, and the Three Persons are the Holy Trinity of Christianity-the three distinct but consubstantial hypo­ stases. The first question raised is how Godard has managed consist­ ently to confuse a simple quotation: is he working from memory, or an incorrect jotting in a notebook? Or has he, despite the seemingly sincere attribution to Brunschvicg, deliberately misconstrued the source and meaning of the quotation? The questions around iden­ tity and the self raised by Brunschvicg's book and Godard's misrep­ resentation of it are complicated even further, in a way we have seen before with Godard: Brunschvicg, because he was Jewish, was forced out of his position at the Sorbonne after the French defeat in 1 940 and wrote his book in the south of France. In ill health, he was forced to go into hiding to escape the Nazis in 1 942 , the year Descartes and Pascal was published in Switzerland; he died of natural causes in January 1 944 at the age of seventy-four. It is to Brunschvicg that Godard attributes Pascal's comments on Christianity and reads them to be about the merging of the modern self with other identities. Timothy Barnard Leon Brunschvicg. Descartes et Pascal, lecteurs de Montaigne, 1 944· Rene Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy < 1 64 1 >, 1 98+ Jean-Luc Godard. Mots qui se croisent + Rebus = Cinema Done ( 1 966),

l 998J . . Film Socialisme, 2 0 1 00. --- . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television , 20 l 4. Michael Metschies. La Citation et !'art de citer dans !es Essais de Montaigne < 1 966>, 1 997· Michel de Montaigne. The Complete Essays < 1 5 80>, 2 004. Blaise Pascal. Pensees < 1 670>, 2 003 . ---

C HARLES BU KOW S KI An Evil Town

RITING BY THE

American poet, short story writer and novelist Charles Bukowski appears to feature in only one of Jean-Luc Godard's films. In itself this is not remark­ able; many other authors are drawn on only once. More unusual is to find a number of different texts by the same author in one film, and the close relation of these texts to key themes of the film. In the case of Bukowski, no fewer than five texts are quoted or adapted in Sauve qui peut (la vie) ( 1 980): 'An Evil Town' ( 1 972); 'The Most Beautiful Woman in Town' ( 1 97 1 , under the title 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man'); 'The Gut-Wringing Machine' ( 1 972); 'close encounters of another kind' ( 1 978); and ' Swivel' ( 1 988), by an author who wrote many thousands of short texts in prose or poetry. More unusual still is the Godard-Bukowski encounter, of which Bukowski himself, in his 1 989 novel Hollywood, gives a glimpse, through a character he calls Jon-Luc Modard, who asks Bukowski to prepare the English subtitles of Sauve qui peut and to let him use his poem ' Swivel' , about a man receiving oral sex while working at his desk (p. 3 3). Bukowski explains in a letter:

W

I can't speak French and I was surprised that he gave me credit. What happened is that a Frenchman translated the script into English and then I took the English script and Americanized that. But on the other hand, Godard used one of my poems for a movie scene and I don't get credit for that, except one night we were drinking and he handed me this batch of francs, so that is cash, not credit, o.k. ( 1 999, p. 2 9).

Bukowski's story 'The Most Beautiful Woman in Town' , in which an idyllic scene is immediately followed by news of the char­ acter's suicide by cutting her throat, is the source of another element of Sauve qui peut. Bukowski's idyllic passage had served as interlude in an eventful and violent narrative. In Sauve qui peut it serves a simi­ lar purpose, connecting with other moments of reflection that in­ terrupt the story, in this case taking the form of voice-off musings by the character Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), a prostitute. The story as a whole connects with a motif of suicide running through the An Evil Town. Erections, Ejaculations and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. San Francisco: City Lights, 1 9 7 2 , 3 5 1 -5 6 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

93

film, from Ponchielli's 'Suicidio' aria in the opera La Gioconda ( 1 876) heard at the beginning of the film to the male protagonist's suicidal walk backwards into the path of the car that kills him at the end. One such voice-off covers an entirely different space in the film, when Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye) and Paul Godard Qacques Dutronc) are in bed, after Isabelle has just phoned them, making it not so clearly the voicing of her thoughts as an entirely extra­ narrative commentary. Soon after in the same sequence Isabelle's voice-off reads a description of Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness ( 1 899), again more commentary than interior monologue. Conrad enters this intertextual space by a similar route to Bukowski; Godard met the latter in California through Francis Ford Coppola at a time when Coppola was preparing his adaptation of Conrad's book (Apocalypse Now, 1 9 79). A third much different text is used quite differently. Bukowski's poem 'close encounters of another kind' is dialogue framed by narra­ tive, from which Godard takes the dialogue for an exchange between a man and a woman. Here Godard's dialogue is generally faithful to Bukowski's poem. The vignette serves as counterpoint to Paul's at­ tempts at relationships with women, in the immediate context with Isabelle, who has just picked Paul up in a queue outside a cinema. The sequence that follows, where Paul and Isabelle have sex, has the first of Isabelle's voice-off lucubrations, but the present author has not been able to trace this passage to Bukowski. It could well be from another author. This passage functions in Sauve qui peut, like those from Bukowski already discussed, as illustration of or supple­ ment to the stories of the three protagonists. They are part of an intertextual fabric laid over those stories which includes in its weave the phrase from Conrad and a long passage from Robert Linhart's The Assembly Line ( 1 978), drawn on for Denise's words while writing. Further extracts from Linhart's book are delivered as voice-off. The voice-off texts associated with Denise and Isabelle bring male writers into the intertextual space, where they contrast with an­ other woman's voice, that of MARGUERITE DURAS . Duras is present in Sauve qui peut as narrative anecdote (the scene where she refuses to come into the room), film soundtrack (an extract from her 1 97 7 film Le Camion), image (the images of trucks which, according to Paul, are now 'women's words'), and above all as voice, commenting 'off' on the silence that always surrounds a text, or the reading of a text.

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In contrast to the fragments of men's writing delivered as the thoughts of women, one story from Bukowski is fully integrated into the life and actions of the central male character, to the point that we can consider the opening four minutes of the film, as Paul leaves his hotel, to be an adaptation of Bukowski's story 'An Evil Town' . Sauve qui peut borrows two other elements o f 'An Evil Town'. I n the story a certain Blanche comes to the big city, is raped and becomes a prostitute. Paul in Sauve qui peut meets Isabelle outside a cinema playing Charlie Chaplin's City Lights ( 1 93 r ) , a famous silent film; there a customer holding a copy of La Revue du son ('The Journal of Sound') can be seen and heard complaining that 'there's no sound, they've cut the sound' . Made i n Switzerland with French stars, a generalised European setting and largely European cultural references, Sauve qui peut is given an American inflection by the presence of Bukowski . The American quality of Sauve qui peut is a hangover from Godard's attempt, like Wim Wenders, to make a film in Hollywood with Fran­ cis Ford Coppola's backing. 'The Story', starring Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton, would have been a strange alternative to Sauve qui peut as Godard's return to mainstream filmmaking. One thing it may have shared with the film he eventually made is Bukowski. The published scenario for 'The Story', amid accumulated American de­ tritus (e.g., an ageing Johnny Weissmuller), describes its story's shift from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Roberto is visited in his workplace ('half video studio, half sex shop') by a 'type' who threatens him and his business if he doesn't hand over a compromising tape (p. 43 7). Above this passage in the scenario Godard has placed a photograph of Bukowski. The conclusion one can draw is that he was earmarked to play this particularly sinister type. One could speculate further that the dossier of Bukowski texts on which Godard drew for Sauve qui peut was originally compiled for the American film, and that if finished 'The Story' would have included much of the material dis­ cussed here. But this, of course, is mere speculation. Roland-Franc;ois Lack Charles Bukowski . La Ville satanique, 201 5 .

-- . Hollywood, 1 989. -- . Letter to Gerald Locklin ( 1 98 1 ), 1 999. Jean-Luc Godard. The Story, 1 998P.

C AU M ERY & P I NC HON Becassine among the Turks

EAN-LUC GODARD 's

late work Le Livre d'image (2 0 1 8) brings together references from a heterogeneous cinematic and his­ torical archive, including images and references to Becassine, one of the most famous French female cartoon figures, dating from the early twentieth century. The first reference to Becassine appears in the film's opening scene, when a detail from Leonardo da Vinci's final painting, Saint John the Baptist ( 1 5 1 3-1 6), showing an index finger pointing upwards, is superseded by the following text as it is progressively written on a black screen: 'The masters of the world should be wary of Becassine, precisely because she does not speak' . Although the images we see of Becassine (seemingly drawn at ran­ dom from the vast corpus) do not appear until the second half of the film-when, resonating with Leonardo's painting, she appears with her index finger pointing upwards-she is pictured and referenced more than any other image or work in Le Livre d'inzage. A provincial maid from the French region Bretagne, Becassine is the heroine of the popular eponymous 'bande dessinee' or drawn strip series created by Maurice Languereau (pen name Caumery) and Jacqueline Riviere and illustrated by Joseph Porphyre Pinchon, soon afterwards written by Caumery and drawn by Pinchon . Initially appearing in 1 905 in the pages of La Semaine de la Suzette, a French magazine for girls which ran into the 1 960s, Becassine is one of the most enduring and iconic French comics of all time. In the series, she is typically portrayed without a mouth, wearing a traditional green Breton costume with lace coif and clogs. The name Becassine derives from a number of French words suggestive of naivete and ignorance, which the character decidedly internalises. The series' drawings combine clear outlines, solid blocks of colour and uniform shades, anticipating the 'clear line' school of the comic book popularised by Herge's Tintin from the late 1 940s. The drawings are accompanied by written captions to allow readers to infer meanings while looking at the rest of the text-image units comprising the entire page or panel. This bande dessinee technique of associating multiple drawings and texts, along with the creation of a gutter or space between images and texts in the panel, is comparable

J

Becassine chez les Tures. Paris: Gautier-Languereau,

1 9 1 9.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard to Godard's montage construction as a way of superimposing media elements along with verbal and visual quotations, and of creating meaning through juxtaposition rather than narrative continuity. The arrival of the comic book in France coincided with various demographic movements that occurred during the Third Republic ( 1 870-1 940), in particular large-scale migration from rural areas of the country to urban centres, mostly Paris, with many of these relo­ cated people entering domestic service and labour-intensive work. This migratory dynamic brought about a process of acculturation that was largely effected through the massive public-school education of rural children and their eventual transition to urban employment, a process that transformed the formerly provincial population into a more 'national' one. As Annabelle Cone remarks, Becassine can be viewed as occupying a position of an 'infiltrator' : a migrant worker from rural and parochial France who begins a new role as a house­ maid in the French upper classes, where she silently observes (she has no mouth) the inner workings of French society and the con­ struction of a new national consciousness (pp. 1 8 3 -84). This posi­ tion, Cone argues, made her suitable for rendering visible various hierarchical forces in French society, from early in the century until modernisation-when, in 1 93 9, the series ceased publication (pp. 1 96-97). As suggested by Godard's use of her in Le Livre d'image eighty years later, however, her cultural legacy lived on during those years, and to this day, in a slew of references, tributes, revivals, ani­ mated and live-action films, songs, critiques, spin-offs, protests, etc., including the 1 979 hit single 'Becassine' by pop singer Chantal Goya, star of Godard's 1 966 film Masculin Feminin: 1 5 foits pricis. The figure of Becassine is a rather ambiguous one. Although she is a valuable part of French collective memory, the series portrayed major historical events in a questionable manner. Mark McKinney comments that even though Becassine was a subject affected by what Kristen Ross has called 'internal colonialism' , a process of folkloris­ tic regional integration into French national culture, in general the series complacently flattered French imperial ambitions (pp. 1 6-1 9). This argument is illustrated by McKinney's analysis of the series' use of specific visual and verbal tropes, ranging from advertisements featuring racist depictions of black women to the exotic architecture of foreign and colonial pavilions during the 1 9 3 7 Paris exhibition, the discriminatory depictions of representative members of the colo-

CAU M E RY

&

97

P INCHON

nised nations and, i n its later volumes, hostile depictions o f Arabic people as parasitic and lacking mastery of the French language (pp. 6 1 -62). Cone, on the other hand, points out that some of the albums depict Becassine's relationship to the global political situation in a way that is not merely nationalistic and hostile towards marginalised populations. In the album Becassine chez les Tures ( 1 9 1 9), for example, produced at the historical juncture immediately following the First World War, Becassine escapes her domestic environment and gets to see the victory on the Eastern Front. There, she befriends and joins forces with a younger Arab boy, another culturally 'subjugated' individual, a gesture that indicates an openness to a transnational identity and enables her to project a wish for a different future. In Le Livre d'image, Godard largely explores Western and non­ Western cinematic and cultural representations and visual and verbal tropes proliferating in the cultural and political sphere in France and beyond. The gentle simplicity of Becassine's drawing, her sincere yet silenced expression and her pointing index finger remain secret and indescribable when we see them confronted with the film's eclec­ tic archive of images representing the Orient, such as PIER PAOLO PASOLINI's Arabian Nights ( 1 974) and images from Arab cinema, in­ cluding films by Youssef Chahine, Nacer Khemir and Abderrahmane Sissako. Later in the film, Godard joins his own figure as a filmmaker to that of Becassine, in an image that shows the filmmaker's hands and fingers at an editing table followed by an intertitle repeating the French title of Joseph Conrad's UNDER WESTERN EYES , super­ imposed over Becassine's silent image. The juxtaposition of God­ ard's own image with that of Becassine powerfully evokes ideas about filmmaking and the production of visuality and images as they relate to encountering otherness and silencing voices throughout history. In a gesture that is at once contemplative and critical, the figure of Becassine enables the filmmaker to take up the question of the politics of an image against its own materiality and representation, exploring new ways of thinking about historical representations and the power of the images that this world has produced. Tamara Tasevska Caumery & Joseph Pinchon. Becassine chez !es Tures, l 9 7 7 . Annabelle Cone. Strange Encounters during Wartime, 2 0 1 l . Mark McKinney. The Colonial Heritage of French Comics, 2 0 1 I .

RAY M OND C H ANDLER The Big Sleep was the first novel by Raymond Chandler, whose writings came to define the distinctive genre of American crime fiction called 'hard-boiled'. Born in Chicago, Chandler was educated in England and served in the Canadian army during the First World War before settling in Los Angeles in 1 9 1 9. There he entered the oil business and became a successful oil company executive during the lucrative 1 9 2 0s. By the thirties the oil boom was over and Chandler, now unemployed, turned to the uncertain vocation of writing for the burgeoning pulp-fiction market, publish­ ing short stories in such magazines as Black Mask and Dime Detective. First-person narratives told in a brisk vernacular style that displayed a greater interest in character and setting than plot, Chandler's nov­ els articulated a cynical view of human relationships and scepticism about social institutions and moral authorities that resonated with readers following the Depression and the Second World War. The Big Sleep introduced readers to Chandler's most enduring contribution to American culture, the private investigator Phillip Marlowe. Penetrating the deceptive surfaces of modern American life, Marlowe can see the dangers lurking behind darkened streets and pretty faces. As a private investigator, Marlowe's services were for hire to the highest bidder; yet, as a free agent, he could choose to pursue an investigation for his own reasons and was not always guided by the best interests of his clients. Jean-Luc Godard would later speak of this freedom, with respect to the character played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in A bout de souffie ( 1 960), inspired by Hum­ phrey Bogart, as suggestive of a greater yet ultimately false freedom from social stricture: 'a private detective . . . represents the highest degree of freedom . . . in a kind of stupid sense: doing whatever you want. His hands are in his pockets; he doesn't get dirty, he's not a manual worker. He's not an intellectual either. He's a free man, or what people in the West must imagine freedom to be . . . . In fact . . . you're hemmed in on all sides and don't see the overall structures' (pp. 1 6- 1 7). In The Big Sleep Marlowe is hired by the wealthy General Stern­ wood to investigate a blackmail plot against one of his two daughters,

T

HE BIG SLEEP

The Big Sleep. New York: Knopf,

1 939.

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Carmen, a murderous nymphomaniac who is eventually revealed to have killed her sister Vivian's husband after he refused her sexual advances. It is characteristic of the hard-boiled crime story that often the solution of a crime serves to reveal larger patterns of guilt and complicity rippling out and eventually encompassing all of society. In The Big Sleep the blackmail plot that consumes the first half of the novel is merely the beginning of an investigation that ultimately incriminates the entire Sternwood family. Indeed, all of Los Angeles as depicted in Chandler's fiction represents a fallen modern world filled with routine violence and anonymous human suffering, domi­ nated by the debased values of a commercialised mass culture, where the gangster and the millionaire rule with the complicity of a corrupt and demoralised police force. First published in France as Le Grand Sommeil in 1 948 in a trans­ lation by Boris Vian, The Big Sleep appeared as the thirteenth title in the Serie noire. Godard may have initially encountered the story through the 1 946 adaptation of the book by American director How­ ard Hawks, a favourite of the young critics who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema and one of the first American filmmakers to be advanced by them as an auteur. Hawks' version of The Big Sleep altered Chandler's story drastically, no doubt to appease the Production Code, which would not have approved Chandler's book as written. In particu­ lar Hawks rehabilitated Vivian Sternwood, transforming her from the cold blooded accomplice to her husband's murder that she is in the novel to a more suitable love interest for the film's leading man, Humphrey Bogart, whose performance as Phillip Marlowe was consistent with his 'tough guy' screen persona. Hawks made other revisions: in the book Marlowe avoids any sexual contact with the Sternwood sisters because he must remain detached and indifferent to solve the case; in Hawks' film Bogart is a ladies man who engages in sexual banter and romances several female characters. The ex­ plosive on-screen emotional chemistry between Bogart and a young Lauren Bacall as Vivian was famously continued off-screen, and the couple was married following completion of the film. The ambivalent sexual politics of Chandler's fiction, based on an idealised masculine ethos and a fear of female sexuality, were explic­ itly commented upon by Godard in Alphaville: une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965). Lemmy Caution (a character invented by British author PETER CHEYNEY as an imitation of Chandler's Phillip

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

IOO

Marlowe) appears in one scene reading The Big Sleep. Godard's use of the book as an intertextual reference seems intended to achieve a kind of semantic redundancy: we watch a private detective reading a book about a private detective. It is part of a whole series of refer­ ences to American film noir, for which Chandler's hard-boiled style of writing provided a literary equivalent: the menacing urban milieu, the iconography of the private detective, his use of violence, his cynicism and emotional detachment and even Caution's voice-over observations throughout the film all seem indebted to Chandler's style and technique as a writer. Underlying much of Chandler's work is a thinly veiled misogyny centred on the figure of the femme fatale, and the private detective's occupation typically conditions him to be a loner and suspicious of women. Like Marlowe, Caution also avoids entanglements with women, as we see him reject the advances of the 'Seductress Third Class' who escorts him to his hotel room after arriving in Alpha­ ville. Caution brusquely rej ects her and positions her holding a nude magazine pin-up over her head. Lying in bed with a copy of The Big Sleep, Caution reaches for his gun and shoots two holes through the breasts of the pin-up. Such a symbolic act of sexual violence lays bare the masculine uncertainties embodied in characters such as Caution/Marlowe, the currents of fear and desire which provoke them to violence and structure their relationships with women. Yet the tone is parodic and playful: a moment later Godard reintroduces Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina) with a direct reference to another Hawks/Bogart/Bacall film-To Have and Have Not ( 1 944)-when she sticks her head in the door and asks Caution: 'Got a light? ', the stock come-on of the femme fatale, which reiterates the stereotype while undercutting it again through repetition and semantic redundancy. John Parris Springer Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep, 1 99 5 · ---

. Le Grand Sommeil, 1 998.

Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television

< 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

P ETER C HEY N EY This Man is Dangerous 1 9 36, This Man Is Dangerous was the first novel by Peter Cheyney, a prolific British author of crime and es­ pionage fiction and creator of the popular character Lemmy Caution, who eventually appeared in ten novels as well as nine films by five different directors, his most famous appearance being in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville: une Ctrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965). Cheyney reportedly wrote the novel on a bet that he could not produce a story convincingly written in the style of American hard-boiled crime fiction as exemplified by the work of writers such as RAYMOND CHANDLER and Dashiell Hammett. When his first effort was accepted for publication, Cheyney won the bet, beginning a long career as a writer of popular fiction during the 1 940s and 50s. Cheyney's Lemmy Caution is a version of the cynical, world­ weary existential anti-heroes who crowded the pages of hard-boiled crime novels and short stories as well as the post-war American crime movies dubbed film noir by French film critics. In sharp con­ trast to the protagonists of the classic 'puzzle' mysteries, in which scientific criminologists and amateur sleuths were guided, through logical deduction and analysis of clues, to an inevitable revelation of 'whodunit', the 'private dicks' and undercover 'fly cops' of hard­ boiled fiction most often relied on dogged persistence, casual vio­ lence and random acts of fate as they navigated a much more sinister underworld milieu. Cheyney's Caution is a hyperbolic example of such characters, and his actions display a propensity for sudden and excessive violence sometimes bordering on the absurd. Though the plot of This Man is Dangerous is pure pulp formula, the novel is most notable for its colourful and highly idiomatic language. Written in a brisk, first-person voice, the novel contains some of the gaudiest gangster patter to be found in hard-boiled writing, and ultimately it is this voice which most dramatically shapes Caution's character as a hard-drinking, womanising risk-taker, constantly walking the thin line between criminality and the law. In 1 945, following the Liberation of France, Marcel Duhamel began editing the famous Serie noire for the French publisher Gal­ limard. A former actor and would-be screenwriter, Duhamel had

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UBLISHED IN

This Man Is Dangerous. London: William Collins, 1 9 3 6.

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belonged to a group of Surrealist artists and writers in the 1 92 0s and 30s, including ANDRE BRETON,Jacques Prevert and Yves Tanguy, who would gather for screenings of American gangster films, drawn by their raw brutality and violence. Such noir sensibilities informed Duhamel's work as an editor of the series, which presented French translations of works by American hard-boiled writers such as HORACE MCCOY, W.R. Burnett, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. Printed in distinctive black covers with yellow titles and no cover illustra­ tions, the Serie noire initially led to the French generic designation of roman n o ir-dark novel-to convey the sense of brutality, indiffer­ ence and disillusionment that so often characterise these works. The first two novels published in the series, both translated by Duhamel, were Cheyney's Lemmy Caution novels Poison Ivy ( 1 9 3 7), published in French as La Mame vert-de-gris ( 1 945), and This Man is Dangerous (Cet homme est dangereux, 1 945). It is through these translations of Cheyney's work that Lemmy Caution entered into French post-war popular culture. In 1 9 5 3 Duhamel wrote the screenplay for director Jean Sacha's adaptation of This Man is Dangerous, establishing the character as a fixture on French movie screens for the next decade. Lemmy Caution was brought to life on the screen by the Ameri­ can-born singer/actor Eddie Constantine, though John Van Dreelen played Caution in Brelan d'as ( 1 9 5 2). Constantine was a classically trained singer who, after failing to establish a career, ended up in Paris singing in nightclubs, where he met Edith Piaf, who became a close friend and mentor. He first achieved some success as a record­ ing artist but it was his appearance as Lemmy Caution in Bernard Borderie's Poison Ivy ( 1 95 3) and Jean Sacha's This Man Is Danger­ ous that proved to be the turning point in his career, establishing a screen persona that he would inhabit for the rest of his life and through several different characters. Constantine's Caution, with his gravel voice and craggy features, complete with trench coat and fedora, appeared in six more Lemmy Caution films throughout the late 1 950s and early 1 960s. By the time he made Alphaville with God­ ard he had become something of a cult figure and an icon of French popular culture, although in clear decline. Godard evoked all of the mythic qualities of the character in his film, which is simultaneously an homage to and a parody of the hard­ boiled genre. Alphaville has a loose, episodic structure, similar to Cheyney's Caution novels, but it is mainly the character of Lemmy

P ETER C H EY N E Y

1 03

that Godard preserves unchanged, placing him in a dystopian future society ruled by a super-computer called Alpha 60. Shot entirely over a two-month period and without the use of sets or special effects, Godard's science fiction/noir vision in Alphavitle displays his charac­ teristic interest in the semantic dimensions of American film genres as vehicles for philosophical and political analysis. Lemmy Caution, disguised by his undercover identity as Ivan Johnson, reporter for the newspaper Figaropravda, meets and falls in love with Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina), daughter of Professor von Braun, a rogue scientist who has fled from the Outerlands and transformed Alpha­ ville into an authoritarian technocracy governed by constant surveil­ lance and the oppressive control of thought and emotion achieved through the systematic removal of certain words from the language. Lemmy discovers that the computer programs which govern Alpha 60 cannot process the emotional meanings of poetry, which is why certain words such as 'love' and 'tenderness' have become forbidden to use by the citizens of Alphaville. As Alpha 60 declares war on the Outerlands in what seems to presage a full-scale apocalyptic con­ frontation, Caution confronts and kills Professor von Braun, before escaping with Natacha to an uncertain future. In Godard's vision of the future, fabricated entirely from what was, in 1 965 , present-day Paris, Lemmy Caution seems an incongruous figure, displaced in time as well as space into a milieu for which he can only serve as a referent for values that have become anachronistic and therefore potentially transgressive in the future. John Parris Springer Peter Cheyney. This Man is Dangerous, 2 0 2 2 . ---

. Cet homme est dangereux, 1 98 3 .

ELDRI DG E C LEAVER

0 NE PLUS ONE

Soul on Ice

premiered at the London film festival in November 1 968 as Sympathy for the Devil. Producer Iain Quarrier believed the title change would appeal to patrons familiar with the Rolling Stones, whose recording of the song with the same title in a London studio frames the film. Unbeknownst to Jean-Luc Godard until the premiere, the song appears in its entirety at the end of the revised cut. Seeing it for the first time at London's National Theatre, Godard leapt onto the stage, punched Quarrier in the nose, and exclaimed to the audience that they should demand their money back and donate it to the Eldridge Cleaver fund. Cleaver, whose work as a black activist was widely known, campaigned for the United States presidency that year under the Peace and Freedom Party. His work, along with that of other black nationalists, informs several important scenes in the film. Themes of creation and destruction frame two major parts of the film. Five of the ten sequences are long takes of the Rolling Stones repetitively constructing the vocal and instrumental layers of their controversial 'Sympathy for the Devil', a song heavily influenced by the sounds of jazz and blues. The film is not, however, a celebration of the band. Rather, Godard saw them as exploiting an oppressed culture's art forms in order to capitalise, which is why the inclusion of the complete and marketable song at the end of a film criticising capitalism was such an affront. Juxtaposed with the Stones is 'Outside Black Novel', a sequence depicting black militants in a seaside junkyard reciting from four texts: Cleaver's Soul on Ice; AMIRI BARAKA's Blues People: Negro Music in White America ( 1 963) and Black Music ( 1 967); and a speech given by Stokely Carmichael in February 1 968 in Oakland. Similar to the scenes in the recording studio, this junkyard sequence also relies on repetition: sometimes the excerpts are fed from one character to another, each bellowing the passage amidst the industrial sounds around them. Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice while stuck in Folsom prison in 1 965 , serving time for rape and attempted murder. A collection of essays ranging from his thoughts on crime and black liberation to gender

Soul on Ice. New York: McGraw Hill, 1 968.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

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relations and sexuality, Soul on Ice became a surprise bestseller. In 'Outside Black Novel' a character recites passages from Soul on Ice relating to black masculinity, sexuality and the goddess-like percep­ tions of white women, while three white women are paraded into the junkyard wearing white gowns. One woman lies down on the ground while a gun-toting black man caresses her body. Off camera, the women are then shot. The white women in Cleaver's work are caressed and then destroyed as symbols of ideal beauty forbidden to black men. Explaining why he chose this particular passage from Cleaver, Godard said the theme of sexuality motivated his choice, which let him contrast 'Outside Black Novel' with another sequence in One Plus One, that set in a pornographic book exchange, during which Iain Quarrier reads from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf ( 1 9 2 5). The book exchange combines fascism with eroticism, with the mag­ azines and books within the exchange reinforcing the associations between pornography and politics; as Kevin ]. Hayes remarks, 'po­ litical control and sexual domination had become one and the same, and both were wrapped up with Western notions of free enterprise' (p. 2 24). Godard thus contrasts fascist power with black power, using eroticism and the commodification of the idealised beauty of white women to do so. Images of women in these sequences serve to connect various ideologies. In his talks in Montreal in 1 978, Godard explained: 'Images of women are there for people to have a sense, within a totalitarian text, of pornography as being a part of totalitarianism and totalitarianism as being a part of pornography' (p. 3 9 1 ). Godard sought to align the elements of pornography and political ideology, and connect ideas at a time when the impulse was to compartmen­ talise them. He reflects that he even sees this in his past films: 'If I think back over the history of my films, there was a time when my films were plainly . . . divided'. In One Plus One, however, he attempts to reconcile ideas: "'Choose one thing or the other", the saying goes, but for me, it's: "There are two things, don't choose one"' (p. 3 80). Godard's thoughts here could apply to his perceptions of Cleaver himself. Ultra-radical in his early years and born-again Christian and Republican later in life, Cleaver had been transformed from the man Godard had interviewed in 1 968 for his unfinished film 'One A.M.' (for 'One American Movie')-an interview that began with Godard being frisked by men with machine guns-to a man who

1 06

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

might be interviewed 'alongside Billy Graham in his white suit' (pp. 3 77-78). Cleaver was the 'one plus one' of ideas that Godard had sought to explore in the film. Continuing the motif of creation and destruction, Godard employs the words of Amiri Baraka to criticise the capitalist appro­ priation of another culture. Baraka's Blues People and Black Music are heavily quoted in 'Outside Black Novel', as Baraka criticised white bands (including the Rolling Stones specifically) for appropriating black music, creating degenerative forms of it and ultimately minstrelising and destroying it for the sake of profit. Situated between the readings of Cleaver and Baraka are the words of Stokely Carmichael, a leader in the Black Panther Party. Recitations related to colonisation and slavery, black nationalism and mobilising against white oppression come from a speech Carmi­ chael made in Oakland on 1 7 February 1 968 during a rally for Huey P. Newton, where thousands gathered to protest his imprisonment after being charged with the murder of an Oakland police officer. It is not clear where Godard saw or heard Carmichael's speech, but he may have seen footage from fellow French filmmaker Agnes Varda, who attended the gathering and whose documentary Black Panthers ( 1 968) included speeches from it. Protests during the late 1 960s challenged people to confront issues of oppression and capitalism. 'Outside Black Novel' employs figures outside the mainstream to comment on 1 960s counter­ culture. Godard's use of quoted material for the sequence suggests he is working from sources 'outside' the film who are responsible for the dialogue but who do not physically appear in it. The dialogue, like the band's recording, is an appropriation of culture and words, leaving the audience to question what they see and hear, a concept central to the revolutionary theme of the film. Robyn McGee Eldridge Cleaver. Soul on Ice, 1 999·

. Un Nair a l'ombre, 1 969. Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Kevin J. Hayes. The Book as Motif in One Plus One, 2004. ---

J EAN C OC TEAU Thomas the Impostor two decades of]ean-Luc Godard's cine­ matic career from his film criticism of the early 1 950s to his films of the late 1 960s, Tom Milne called Jean Cocteau 'a film­ maker who is quoted more frequently than any other in Godard's work' (p. 2 7 7). Cocteau, of course, was much more than a filmmaker, and Godard quoted his writings as well as his films. This inter­ est in the Right-Bank dandy of Paris may seem odd; Antoine de Baecque describes Godard's passion for the work of Cocteau when he arrived in Paris in the late 1 940s as 'secretive' and 'kitsch' (p . 48). But Godard would have found much of interest, for example, in Cocteau's volume of epigrams Cock and Harlequin ( 1 9 1 8), in which he proclaimed with Godardian logic that 'an artist cannot copy. So he only has to copy to be original' (p. 34). None of Cocteau's novels is more prominent in Godard's work than Thomas l'imposteur, which appears in Le Petit Soldat ( 1 960/63); of his films, none has influenced Godard more than Orphee ( 1 949). Alphavilte: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965), James S. Williams argues (p. 2 1 3), is the first in a long line of Godard's re­ makes of Orphee, which include Altemagne 90 neuf zero: Solitudes, un itat et des variations ( 1 99 1 ) and Helas pour moi ( 1 993). Godard's passion for Cocteau bridges his films and his writings. La Belle et la Bete ( 1 946), appearing on hotel television screens in Detective ( 1 985) and reappearing in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), is a film Godard enjoyed reading about as well as watching. Cocteau discusses the emotional pain he suffered during its production in Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film ( 1 946), a book Godard carried around with him during his early years in Paris. He gave a copy to Anne Wiazemsky, who recorded his appreciation: 'J ean-Luc saw in this heroic film shoot the very embodiment of cinema's nobility. In his view, it was the finest text ever written on the topic' (p. 1 0 2 ). Thomas the Impostor is not the only Cocteau novel that influ­ enced Le Petit Soldat. Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), the film's eponymous hero, is named after two literary characters: Forestier, a French soldier captured during the First World War and re-edu­ cated as a German in Jean Giraudoux's 1 9 2 2 novel MY FRIEND FROM

S

URVEYING THE FIRST

Thomas l'imposteur. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 2 3 .

1 08

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

LIMOUSIN; and Jacques Forestier, the protagonist of Cocteau's The Miscreant ( 1 9 2 3 ). Released a week apart in 1 92 3 , Thomas the Impostor and The Miscreant are both stories of a man trapped between childhood and adulthood. In addition, The Miscreant provided a structural blue­ print for Le Petit Soldat. Like the novel, the film occurs in flashback. Cocteau's novel begins after Jacques Forestier's doomed love affair with Germaine has ended in his suicide attempt. Bruno Forestier begins by narrating his personal story in voice-over, as he reflects on what has happened to him. Furthermore, the ending of The Miscre­ ant anticipates a central theme of Le Petit Soldat. Jacques Forestier is despondent as the novel concludes: 'Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn' (p. 1 63). Bruno Forestier reiterates this traditional metaphor, lamenting that peo­ ple's external features no longer reflect their inner life. Having deserted the French army, Bruno has ended up in Geneva, where he has become active in a right-wing paramilitary group working for the French government against Algerian inde­ pendence. Ordered to assassinate Palivoda, who has been aiding the Algerian resistance, Bruno demurs. Jacques (Henri-Jacques Huet) and Paul (Paul Beauvais) attempt to coerce him. Early in the film, Jacques removes a copy of Thomas the Impostor from his coat pocket. Bruno, who knows the novel already, names Cocteau as its author, whereupon Jacques begins reading from it. Guillaume Thomas, the novel's teenaged title character, is mis­ takenly identified as the nephew of a famous military commander. He assumes the identity, which ingratiates him to Clemence, who is busy trying to establish a private hospital for wounded soldiers during the Great War. While using him and his famous name to get her hospital going, she becomes a mother hen to Guillaume. Instead of facilitating his entry to adulthood, his new identity lets him revert to childhood, the realm of make-believe. Increasingly unable to distinguish between fiction and reality, Guillaume travels to the Western front, oblivious of the danger. To see him again Clemence accompanies a group of actors travelling to the front to perform for the troops, a theme Godard would use in For Ever Mozart ( 1 996) . Clemence is briefly reunited with Guillaume, but eventually he ends up alone and gets shot while delivering a message.

J EA N C O C T E A U

What Jacques reads to Bruno is Guillaume's death scene: 'Guil­ laume flew, ran like a hare. Without hearing the shots, he stopped, and turned round out of breath. Then he felt a terrible blow on his chest. He fell, he became deaf and blind. A bullet, he said to him­ self. I'm finished unless I pretend to be dead, but with him, fiction and reality were one. Guillaume Thomas was dead' . Jacques finds the scene beautiful. Bruno agrees, saying he would like to die like that. 'Perhaps you will ' , Paul retorts. Given their shared passion for Cocteau, Bruno and Jacques could have become friends under dif­ ferent circumstances, but Paul's threat weaponises Cocteau's words, turning beauty into ugliness. Boleslaw Sulik finds this passage from Thomas the Impostor appli­ cable to Le Petit Soldat as a whole. Throughout the film, Sulik argues, Godard 'engages in a kind of dialectic between fact and fiction, myth and actuality' (p. 9). Bruno would return to the passage late in Le Petit Soldat. After he has been seized by the Algerians and tortured, Bruno escapes and rejoins Veronica Dreyer (Anna Karina), delivering to her a long monologue in which he says: 'Taciturn, there's a word that is very beautiful-like Guillaume. Me, I'm lost unless I pretend to be lost' . Bruno recaptures the beauty of Cocteau's prose, but he has not learned the lesson of Thomas the Impostor. Guillaume, who thrives when he can pretend to be something he is not, never realises that he cannot pretend to be something he already is, that fiction cannot mask reality when the two coincide. Neither does Bruno. He cannot pretend to be lost because he is lost already. No longer can Bruno distinguish fact from fiction. Accepting Jacques' lies as truth, Bruno murders Palivoda but cannot stop Veronica's murder. Kevin ]. Hayes Jean Cocteau. Thomas the Impostor, 1 006.

. Thomas l'imposteur, 1 97 3 · Antoine d e Baecque. Godard: Biographie, 1 0 1 0. Jean Cocteau. Cock and Harlequin < 1 9 1 8>, l 9 2 r . --- . The Miscreant < 1 92 p, 2 003 . ---

Tom Milne. Commentary ( 1 972), 1 986. Boleslaw Sulik. Escape into Fiction, 1 963 . Anne Wiazemsky. Une Annie studieuse, 2 0 1 2 . James S. Williams. Encounters with Godard, 2 0 1 6.

M AHM OU D DARWI S H The Flowers of B lood

HY AREN'T REVOLUTIONS

made by the most humane people? Jean-Luc Godard is asked at the beginning of his 2 004 film Notre Musique. 'Humane people do not make revolutions', he answers. 'They make libraries'. Another voice adds: 'also graveyards'. Indeed, Godard's oeuvre oscillates between revolu­ tionary zeal-the political moment as an interruptive act, a decisive cut-and its further iterations, in text and image: repetitions, rever­ berations, archiving. One could see many of his films as elaborate libraries of failed revolutions filled with populated graveyards. A special place in this vast cinematic corpus is given to the Pal­ estinian struggle, which Godard has accompanied throughout his creative life. He was there in its revolutionary moment in the late 1 960s and early 70s, going to the Fatah camps in Jordan and Lebanon with Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dziga Vertov Group and spending days and nights with the Palestinian fighters, the fedayeen: filming them, but also living amongst them as they trained for armed revolt to gain back Palestinian lands. He was there also in the aftermath of that revolutionary moment-'a period of intense ideological and organizational flux, during which the basis was laid for a later post­ revolutionary phase of state-building in exile', Yezid Sayigh remarks (p. 1 48)-which turned into a struggle for a sovereign state in parts of historical Palestine, then semi-autonomy and self-rule, resulting in the long decay of the Palestinian cause over the past twenty years. In lei et ailleurs ( l 976, with Anne-Marie Mieville), Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), Notre Musique and Film Socialisme (2 0 1 0), the question of Palestine is visited time and again, becoming a paradigmatic locus for the possible entanglements of political revolt and cinematic intervention. It seems only natural that Mahmoud Darwish, the unofficial yet widely acknowledged Palestinian national poet and a key figure in the Palestinian polity in the latter half of the twentieth century, would appear in Godard's films. Born in al-Birwa, a village in Galilee which was soon to be destroyed during the 1 948 war, Darwish lived in dif­ ferent places-Haifa, Beirut, Amman, Ramallah, Paris-becoming

W

Azhar al-Damm. Diwan Mahmud Darwish. Beirut: Dar al 'Awdah, 1 9 7 1 , 52 3-40.

Reading w ith Jean -Luc Godard

l l l

a living personification of Palestinian homelessness and exile. In his poetry, the Palestinians' absence from their historic lands is dialec­ tically negated (negated without being abolished) by the presence of poetic enunciation by an always present/absent poet. In besieged Ramallah, Darwish wrote in 2 00 2 : '(To Poetry) : Besiege your siege'; '(To a poet): Whenever absence is your absentee I you get mixed up in the solitude of gods I so be the bewildered "self" of your subj ect I and the "subject" of your self, I be present in absence' (p. 1 49). In Godard's hands this mode of personification via conflicted presence is challenged, opening the space for different relations to the poetic. In lei et ailleurs, Darwish appears only through his words: a young Palestinian girl stands in the ruins of a building in the village of Karammeh, where the Fatah forces held a fierce battle of resistance against the Israeli army in 1 968, and recites a Darwish poem, which Rebecca Dyer and Franc;ois Mulot identify as 'Azhar al-Damm', commemorating the 1 956 massacre in Kafr Qasim in which Israeli soldiers killed 48 people who violated a curfew order of which they were unaware. The author of 'The Flowers of Blood' is not men­ tioned in the film; his words are not translated into French; and it is hard to fully comprehend them even in Arabic, as the recitation is accompanied by an expanded voice-over commentary which critical­ ly examines the whole scene, seeing it as 'revolutionary theatre'. One could argue that Darwish's poem is being written over in the film, completely lost in incomprehensibility. It is true that, as a concrete poem, it is indeed absent from the film. But this absence enables the emergence of the poetic event. Here the power of poetic enuncia­ tion-as a declaration, a plea and demand, a mode of resistance-is expressed. Recitation, in the revolutionary moment of 1 968, is not mere repetition: it is an indispensable register of the struggle. Decades later, the place of the poetic vis-a-vis the struggle had dramatically changed. Notre Musique takes place in Saraj evo, at an annual European book meeting to which various renowned writers and artists, including Godard, are invited. It is the aftermath of the Balkan civil war, after years of bombing, massacres and attempts at ethnic cleansing, and the film's camera travels through the various ruins and remains of the violence that took place in Europe. The writers' visit to the demolished library of Sarajevo, bombarded in 1 99 2 , presents the now devastated place of culture: Charles Baude­ laire's famous words from 'Correlatives' in THE FLOWERS OF EVIL

112

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

( 1 8 5 7) quoted in the film-'Mankind traverses [nature] through forests of symbols that watch him with knowing eyes' (p. 67)-are understood anew, the huge library becoming a repository for signs of wreckage. Darwish is invited to this scenery; stating that throughout history we have known the vanquished only from the words of the victors, he-the poet of a defeated people-declares: 'I want to speak for the absent ones, for the poet of Troy' . In the Godardian cinematic apparatus, this declaration is com­ plicated. Judith Lerner (Sara Adler), a young Israeli journalist, comes to interview Darwish. He stands in front of a window, appearing in silhouette. They sit facing each other, and the interview begins. It appears as a sublimated form of struggle: Darwish speaks in Arabic, Lerner in Hebrew, and they don't quite talk to each other; they pro­ nounce their words as if from a script. Indeed it is a staged interview: the two repeat verbatim sections from an interview Darwish gave to Helit Yeshurun, a renowned Israeli literary figure, published in Hebrew in 1 996; it was later translated and published in French and English. Darwish, then, repeats his own words, speaks for himself. He is the poet of Troy, both present and absent-'Are you sure Mr Darwish is here ? ' , asks someone early in the film, in this Babel of languages of which the film is composed, in the ruined library which at this time is the only possible 'forest of literature', in search of a proper language. Inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy ( 1 3 20), Notre Musique titles its second chapter 'Purgatory' , showing the reverber­ ations of hellish atrocities: these are the horrible days of the al-Aqsa Intifada, signifying the collapse of the Palestinian struggle for eman­ cipation. The speaker, then, is not the poet of resistance, expressing the power of struggle, but a melancholy poet, Troy's Homer, looking for a language that can speak for someone and something. On the threshold of the twenty-first century, grasping the failed revolts of the twentieth, the century of cinema, Godard, like Darwish, searches for a poetic utterance for the time after the struggle. Shaul Setter Mahmoud Darwish. The Flowers of Blood, 2 0 1 7 . Charles Baudelaire. Correlatives < 1 8 5 7>, 2 0 1 2 . Mahmoud Darwish. Exile Is So Strong within Me < 1 996>, 2 0 1 2 . ---

. A State ofSeige < 2 002>, 2 007.

Rebecca Dyer & Frarn;:ois Mulot, Mahmoud Darwish in Film, 2 0 1 4. Yezid Sayigh. Armed Struggle and the Search for State ( 1 997), 1 999·

G U Y DEBORD Society of the Spectacle accidental or perfunctory about the moment in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98) when Jean-Luc Godard speaks the name of Guy Debord. It happens in Chapter 3 A, 'La Monnaie de l'absolu' ( 1 998), when, having recalled the calamities and disgraces of wartime Occupation, he contrasts the struggles of 1 944 with the ceremonies of 1 994:

T

HERE IS NOTHING

fifty years on I and we're celebrating the Liberation of Paris I in other words television I since all power has become spec­ tacle I organising a grand spectacle I but they don't even give Guy Debord I a medal (1 998A, vol. 3 , p. 75). These lines are spoken over a clip from Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion ( 1 9 3 7), where Marechal (Jean Gabin) interrupts the prisoners' stage show to rouse the audience to sing 'La Marseillaise', in defi­ ance of their German captors. As usual, Godard is making several points at once. He uses Debord's key concept to describe all contem­ porary power as 'spectacle organising a grand spectacle' -a phrase that captures the totalising and recursive aspects of 'the spectacle' better than most commentators. At the same time, he aligns Debord with Marechal : disrupting the spectacle is an act of bold resistance. Surely, Godard suggests ironically, Debord deserves to be decorated for his heroic assault on the powers that be. As far as the present author can tell, this is one of the very few places in Godard's oeuvre where Debord's name is spoken (or writ­ ten) . Does that mean that he is unfamiliar with Debord's works and deeds? How do we know whether he has read Debord's most famous book, La Societe du spectacle, published in November 1 967, or Inter­ nationale Situationiste, the journal Debord edited from 1 9 5 8 to 1 969? If these questions sound odd, perhaps it is because it has been widely assumed since the mid- 1 96os that Godard was indeed quite familiar with Debord's work and the Situationist project. As present­ ed in their famously intransigent texts, Situationist theory describes modern society as a travesty of anything that deserves to be called real life. At every turn we are confronted by manifestations of the spectacle, ranging from pacified desires and falsified identities to un­ answerable political power and mythical economic laws. Mocking

La Sociite du spectacle. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1 96 7 .

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14

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

an advertisement or denouncing cynical politicians is not enough: it is necessary to recognise how all spectacles compose a system (the grand spectacle) that must be fought in its entirety. But for the parti­ sans of the Situationists, Godard's interest in their project was never a good thing. Reading their insults and accusations-and nothing else-one might conclude that Godard had built his whole career not only by peddling a false radicality, but specifically by plundering Debord's ideas. Suffice to say, this is not the place to answer these attacks; it is enough to recall the charged atmosphere in which God­ ard's reading of Debord first took place. In any event, it is clear that Godard had closely read Situation­ ist texts by the summer of 1 968, when he filmed Un Film comme les autres. Two voices on the soundtrack read quotations from Debord and fellow Situationist Raoul Vaneigem, setting the farmer's theses on the spectacle as 'the perfect image of the ruling economic order' alongside the latter's call for a radical theory that cannot be recuper­ ated. Although this dialogue of quotations is no more definitive than any other element in the film, Godard clearly wants to signal the importance of these texts in the immediate aftermath of May 1 968. During this time Godard was developing an updated Marxist critical vocabulary to align with his newer, more collective way of making films. He saw capitalism and the state, including bourgeois culture and all its media, as a single contradictory ensemble, and in a January 1 969 interview he used the terms 'the System' and 'the spectacle' interchangeably to designate this bloc ( 1 998N, p. 3 3 5). In the same interview he praised the practice of ditournement (appropriating and repurposing) in Situationist comics and proposed that radical films could be produced, for example in the Third World, by taking ex­ isting films and simply remaking the dialogue-exactly as former Situationist Rene Vienet would do in the 1 970s. From these early traces we can detect the imprints of Debord's book on Godard's thinking. No doubt the concept of the spectacle poses a theoretical problem that Godard will try to solve in various ways for decades to come. The problem turns precisely on the stra­ tegic possibility of challenging the system of power by undermining its need always to put on a show. By making images and sounds differently, whether by rejecting the usual methods of film produc­ tion or by radically repurposing cultural products in order to negate their ideological effect, one might be able to break the circuits that

GUY

D E B O RD

keep the spectacle running. Debord would develop this approach in his own films of the l 97 o s, refusing the aesthetic and commercial conventions of mainstream cinema. During the same period and onward, Godard carried out his own refusals and reappropriations, exemplified by the sustained and uncompromising virtuosity of Histoire (s) . If Godard does not adopt Debord's whole program, he nevertheless accepts the necessity of the struggle. Later, after his MAOIST jargon has burned off, Godard will continue to present his work in terms of a world-historical contestation over images and sounds, even while exhibiting an autumnal personal tone akin to Debord's final works. And yet the picture is not entirely positive. We need to return to that moment in Chapter 3 A of Histoire(s), where Debord is presented as a resistance fighter. At that very moment, Godard complicates the picture. We see on the screen a fragment from the short story 'Albert of the Capitals' by Marguerite Duras, collected in her volume THE WAR: A MEMOIR, which reads: HITTING IS NECESSARY, RIGHT, JUST (p. l 3 3 i l 998A, vol. 3 , p. 74), followed by a photograph of a young Duras. In the story, these words appear in a scene taking place during the Liberation of Paris, when members of the Resistance are beating up a suspected collaborator, trying to get him to admit his guilt. We are hearing the narrator's thoughts as she watches the beat­ ing: she feels the need to keep up the violence until she realises it no longer matters whether the suspect is guilty or not, or whether he lives or dies. And so Debord's name appears precisely in the fleeting gap between the heroic and the vicious images of resistance. This may be Godard's last word on Debord; inevitably, it is already a kind of public farewell. Guy Debord died by his own hand in November 1 994, just a few months before an early version of Chapter 3 A was first screened. Richard Dienst Guy Debord. Society ofthe Spectacle, 1 99 5 · ---

. La Societe du spectacle, 2006.

Marguerite Duras. The War: A Memoir, 1 986. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(.l) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. ---

. Deux heures avec Jean-Luc Godard ( 1 969), l 998N.

RENE DES C ARTES Discourse on the Method and his writings, Jean-Luc Godard has made reference to Rene Descartes several times since the late 1 960s. At first these references seemed somewhat generic. In La Chi­ noise ( 1 967), for example, a schematic black-and-white reproduction of Frans Hals' portrait of Descartes (c. 1 649) smeared with red and blue, an allusion to the French flag, is shown as we listen to praise for JEAN-PAUL SARTRE followed by a reference to the decline of the European Left. The same reproduction appears again fifteen min­ utes later, this time reframed on the cover of Sartre's book Descartes ( 1 946); the book's title and Descartes' face are smeared here as well, included in a mural of 'public enemies' composed of a dozen photo­ graphs of political figures (Lyndon Johnson, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Trot­ sky, Himmler), portraits of thinkers and artists (Descartes, Novalis, Godard himself), book covers (The Order ofThings by Michel Foucault, Soviet Cinema by Those Who Made It), etc. Of them all, Descartes is the only 'enemy' hit with an arrow by one of the young people (] ean­ Pierre Leaud), for whom 'just as the arrow must aim at its target, Marxism-Leninism must aim for revolution'. Soon after the film's release, in an interview in Cahiers du Cinema, Godard imagined a university course spoken by actors, giving as an example of the ma­ terial for such a course Descartes' Sixth Meditation ( 1 998M, p. 3 2 5). These somewhat generic references would become more pre­ cise in later films, focusing on Descartes' Cogito argument ('I think, therefore I am'), which the filmmaker will use in both its French and Latin versions ('Je pense, done je suis' and 'Cogito, ergo sum') and then discuss its connection to subjectivity. In their film Letter to Jane: An Investigation about a Still ( 1 972), Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin construct variations around the French Cogito argument (borrowed from Discours de la Mithode, part IV) to discuss the change in attitude by American movie actors with the coming of talking cinema: 'be­ fore talking film, silent cinema had a materialist technical starting point. Actors said: I am (filmed), therefore I think (I think at least that I am filmed). It is because I exist that I think. After talking film, there was a New Deal between the filmed material (the actor) and

I

N BOTH HIS FILMS

Discours de la mithode. Pour bien conduire sa raison & chercher la viriti dans les sciences. Leiden: Jan Maire, l 6 3 7 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

I

17

thought. Actors began to say: I think (that I am an actor), therefore I am (filmed) . It's because I think that I exist' ( 1 998A, p. 3 5 8). In Chapter l B, 'Une Histoire seule' ( 1 989/98), of Histoire (s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), there appears the intertitle 'cogito ergo video' (I think, therefore I see), a variation of Descartes' Latin phrase Cogito ergo sum, found in Principles of Philosophy, part I, article 7 (p. 1 9 5). Near the beginning of the short film Dans le noir du temps (2002), a woman's voice (that of Anne-Marie Mieville) discusses the status of the 'I' ['Je'] in the Cogito argument: 'In "I think, therefore I am", the "I" of "I am" is no longer the same as the "I" of"I think". Why? The sense of existence I have is not still mine. It is an unthinking sense. It arises within me, but without me'. In addition to Godard's irreverence towards high culture (as seen in the changes made to the portraits in La Chinoise) and his proverbial taste for word play, these passages in three films span­ ning thirty years of work reveal a real desire to address the formula­ tions of Descartes' Cogito. In no way, of course, is there any sort of hermeneutic concern here on the part of a historian of philosophy, something Godard has never wished or pretended to be-on this score, see his imprecise reference to a so-called 'Cartesian system' as the guarantor in Europe of the principle of non-contradiction (20 1 4, p. 2 2 6). Rather, it is a clear act of appropriating a traditional figure of thought, which Godard seeks to explore on his own preferred terrain (thinking by means of words and images) on the basis of his own questions. It is not surprising, moreover, that Godard seeks to confront this figure of thought on several occasions, for the itinerary of his cinema has explicitly established a gradual invasion of narrative by the op­ erations of thought. From at least Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle ( 1 967) and Camera-Geil ( 1 967), rather than simply telling a story, Godard's films increasingly became true acts of thought, governed not by a narrative logic but rather by an argumentative one. And, in a gesture which is in the end rather close to that of Cartesian phi­ losophy, Godard's acts of thought persist in deciphering the world, but on the basis of an attentive inspection of its own representations. It is true that sometimes Godard's deciphering efforts have taken Descartes on as a philosophical adversary. He also sometimes ap­ pears to want to emulate this adversary, as when, in a 1 980 interview, he likened his work (in collaboration with Mieville) on the television

I I

8

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

series France tour detour deux enfants ( 1 9 7 7-78) to Descartes and Aristotle: 'Systematically, I questioned the kids by saying "what about this, what about that? " That becomes close to Descartes, close to Aristotle' ( 1 980). In any event, whether attacking Descartes or emulating him, in the end Godard's filmic thought confirms, in its cinematic operations themselves, an underlying thesis in Descartes' theory of knowledge-one found throughout his work from his ear­ liest to his final texts. According to this thesis, our faculty for know­ ing (i.e. understanding) can act and 'intervene', as Descartes says in Discourse on the Method, IV (p. 1 02), in the flow of the activities and representations of our imagination and our senses, which have 'an intellectual act included in their essential definition' (Sixth Medita­ tion, 1 984, p. 54). This kind of inside 'intervention' would give to our imagination and our senses a power to know the objects of the world. Likewise in Godard's most argumentative films, in which thought arises in the flow of images and sounds-not despite them (they are not an obstacle to an understanding of the world) but through them (they are the soil out of which this understanding can grow). This thought can be expressed in voice-over speech, by words written on the screen or by the organisation of Godard's often disjunctive montage of images and sounds. In each case, it always proposes a kind of mental apprehension or inspection of a flow of sensory and imaginative perceptions, offering us in this manner a peculiar cinematic version of a still Cartesian model of our mind and its functions. Mateus Araujo Rene Descartes. Discourse on the Method, l 98 5 . ---

. Discours de la Methode, 1 996.

. Meditations on First Philosophy < 1 64 1 >, 1 984. --- . Principles of Philosophy < l 644>, r 98 5 .

---

Jean-Luc Godard. S e vivre, s e voir, 1 980. ---

---

. Lutter sur deux fronts ( 1 967), l 998M.

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin. Enquete sur une image ( 1 9 7 2 ) , l 998A.

F R AN, l 986J . Helene Laroche Davis. Reminiscing about Shoot the Piano Player, 1 99 3 ·

J U LI EN G REEN Adrienne Mesurat and L eviathan Paris-born American author Julien Green, who wrote mostly in French, spanned more than seven dec­ ades, from 1 9 20 until his death in 1 998. Green's novels were part of Jean-Luc Godard's reading in his youth and came to fur­ nish his creative imagination: he quotes from Adrienne Mesurat and Leviathan in JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994), and quotes from and frames in close-up a paperback copy of Green's 1 9 3 6 novel MIDNI GHT in Notre Musique (2 004). In Godard's Je vous salue, Marie ( 1 985), the characters Marie (Myriem Roussel) and Joseph (Thierry Rode) read aloud from a much later work by Green, his 1 98 3 bio­ graphy of St Francis of Assisi, God's Fool. The present entry addresses Green's second and third novels, Adrienne Mesurat and Leviathan, which Godard's character in JLG/JLG confuses: he reads aloud the ending of Leviathan and authoritatively pronounces it 'the end of Adrienne Mesurat' (p. 3 5), naming the wrong title. We can attribute this confusion only to Godard's character in the film, not to God­ ard himself. Both novels feature trapped female characters whose provincial milieu denies them recognition and the possibility of self­ realisation. They resist their stultifying surroundings only to become impervious, finally, through death or madness. The novels' plots grant the reader extensive access to the perceptions and thoughts of these characters, revealing the misapprehensions to which their forcibly limited experience subjects them, but also rendering them sympa­ thetic. Adrienne Mesurat has three parts. The first details the boredom and frustration of the eponymous eighteen-year-old character kept at home by a tyrannical father and a resentful older sister, Germaine. In this setting where nothing happens, small gestures assume out­ sized importance: the sickly, middle-aged town doctor Maurecourt passes by in his carriage, touches his hat to acknowledge his neigh­ bour Adrienne, and the rarity of such attention makes her fall in love with him. Sister and father discover Adrienne's interest in Maure­ court and refuse to let her go out on her own. Eventually the father's petty cruelties drive Germaine away. Adrienne helps her sister es­ cape, and in revenge her father threatens to humiliate her in front of

T

HE CAREER OF

Adrienne Mesurat. Paris: Plon, 1 9 2 7 . Leviathan. Paris: Plon, 1 9 2 9 .

1 68

Reading with Jean -Luc Godard

Maurecourt. Part one ends with Adrienne, in desperate rage, shoving her father down the staircase to his death. Part two describes her un­ successful attempts to leave her father's house by taking futile trips to neighbouring towns. In part three, Maurecourt, the only person in the novel to treat her kindly (her other neighbours insult, defame and steal from her), refuses her love, and Adrienne goes mad. De­ spite the marked uneventfulness of most of the protagonist's life, the novel generates suspenseful dramatic irony out of the misalignment between her hopeful but benighted sense of things and her actual circumstances. Leviathan centres on a young woman, Angele, who is pressured into sex work, and Gueret, an impoverished, unhappily married tutor who is obsessed with Angele and initially doesn't know she is a pros­ titute. Gueret desires and resents Angele, thinking she's rejecting him because he has little money. On the contrary, she is attracted to him precisely because his desire for her causes him, unlike everyone else, to be intimidated. When he learns of her prostitution, his mis­ guided sense of rejection prompts him to disfigure her. JLG/JLG explicitly refers to both novels in a conversation be­ tween JLG and his housekeeper Brigitte. Adrienne, like Brigitte, fre­ quently appears in the act of dusting a house. Green introduces his heroine, duster in hand, as she gazes at family photographs. When her sister interrupts her, she pretends to be dusting their glass. In part two, describing how Adrienne spent the days shortly after kill­ ing her father, Green writes: 'She amused herself by taking the books out of their shelves, brushing their backs with a clothes brush, and putting them back in order of size. It never occurred to her to read one' (pp. l 3 3-34). In JLG/JLG, Brigitte also dusts a library. Perhaps this shared activity between Adrienne and Brigitte prompts JLG persistently to address his housekeeper by the name of Green's hero­ ine, despite her repeated corrections. JLG also reads to Brigitte the ending of Leviathan, which describes the demise of Angele: 'In the extreme confusion in which all the things of the Earth were for this woman, the sound of human speech barely reached her, but she no longer understood its meaning. Already her eyes were fixed on the vision that the dead contemplate forever' (pp. 8 1 3 -1 4; 202 2 , p. 3 5). 'The vision that the dead contemplate forever' has reflexive sig­ nificance in this December self-portrait. Just as Adrienne Mesurat opens with the title character gazing at photographs of her ances-

JULIEN GREEN

tors, JLG!JLG opens with JLG gazing a t a photograph of Godard as a boy. JLG calls Brigitte 'Adrienne', but we can also see Brigitte, and Adrienne, as Godard's self-projections, especially as making this self­ portrait entails metaphorically brushing the dust off the past-old books, old films, history. When JLG tells Brigitte he was reading the ending of Adrienne Mesurat, she thanks him for reading aloud. He tells her she is cou­ rageous and will end up on welfare. She disagrees and a shot of an empty road interrupts the scene. When it resumes, Brigitte attempts to refute JLG, telling him she heard that Europe will be building computer highways and that there will be work for everyone. In reply, Godard reads from another book before the scene ends on another shot of a winter landscape: 'great thievery I can be carried out I only in powerful I demo­ cratic nations I where government I is concentrated I in few hands I and where I the state is in charge I of carrying out I immense undertakings' I 1 8 3 0 I Alexis de Tocqueville (p. 36). The provenance of this quotation ofTocqueville, author of the land­ mark two-volume Democracy in America ( 1 8 3 5 /40), is unknown, but if the date Godard ascribes to it is correct it predates Tocqueville's travels in the United States and all of the writings published in his lifetime. Highways, paved and digital, represent for Adrienne and Brigitte sites of possibility; Green and JLG have them ending in disappoint­ ment. The oscillation in JLG/JLG between dimly lit rooms in JLG's apartment and dreary winter landscapes recalls Green's alternation between Adrienne's imprisonment within her father's house and her lonely wandering of provincial streets. Green's autobiography sug­ gests that his early novels of thwarted love refract the clash between his homosexuality and puritanical Christian upbringing, making them, in a sense, sad self-portraits, like JLG/JLG. Karla Oeler Julien Green. Adrienne Mesurat, 1 99 1 .

. Adrienne Mesurat, 1 9 7 2 . --. Leviathan, 1 9 7 2 . Jean-Luc Godard. JLG/JLG e t autres textes, --

202 2 .

J U LI EN G REEN Midnight to American parents, Julien Green was the first non-French national elected to the Academie Frarn;:aise, in 1 97 ! . Celebrated in his lifetime, he saw seven volumes of his collected works published in the esteemed Bibliotheque de la Pleiade and was working on an eighth when he died. Read by Jean­ Luc Godard from an early age, Green's works are quoted in several of his films. In Notre Musique (2 004), Godard juxtaposes the suicide of Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu) with that of Green's protagonist Elisa­ beth in his 1 9 3 6 novel Minuit. Midnight is at once linear and dreamlike, causal and irrational. It begins with the suicide of Elisabeth's mother, Blanche-a vivid scene featuring a character about whom we learn almost nothing. In the aftermath of the suicide, Elisabeth must live with Rose, one of Blanche's three older sisters. Rose terrifies Elisabeth and Elisabeth flees on her very first night in Rose's house. She hides in the town market, where she accosts a passer-by, Monsieur Lerat, a schoolmas­ ter who adopts and raises her. When Lerat dies, Elisabeth's father, Monsieur Edme, sends his servant, Monsieur Agnel, to bring her to a dilapidated chateau, Fontfroide. There, in cult-like seclusion, Edme leads a small group of eccentrics who seem unable or unwill­ ing to leave the house. At Fontfroide, Elisabeth falls in love with a young man, Serge, brought in as a servant. Serge plots their escape but things go awry, leading him to shoot Agnel and die in a fall as he attempts to climb from Elisabeth's bedroom window. Elisabeth follows him out the window. The novel ends with her suicidal fall and with Agnel moving across the sky to raise her up. Midnight permits us to read this ending as either a suicide or a dream. Just before Serge shoots Agnel and Elisabeth lets herself fall, Edme exhorts his followers to prize dreaming over waking life. The narrative devotes disproportionate space to Elisabeth's nocturnal fears and her flights and wanderings in the dark, creating an oneiric atmosphere. The tripartite novel shifts the settings and characters around Elisabeth with dreamlike abruptness. The protagonist's three different milieux (aunts in part one, the Lerat household in part two, Fontfroide in part three) form a unified narrative as much

B

ORN IN PARIS

Minuit. Paris: Plon, 1 9 3 6 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard through repetition as through development. In parts one and three, for instance, Elisabeth suffers bouts of frightened insomnia and flees home (her Aunt Rose's and Fontfroide) by leaping from a window. A pair of scissors appears at key moments in parts one and two. They assume the outsized proportions of a dream object around which meanings condense. Her three aunts also have a symbolic aura, sug­ gesting the three fates. The indeterminacy that renders Elisabeth's suicide both dream and reality also colours the death of Olga Brodsky in Notre Musique. The scene of Godard's seminar at an arts festival in Sarajevo associ­ ates Olga's contemplation of suicide with the imagining that takes place in art, and when we close our eyes. Godard tells the class: 'Try to see, try to imagine something. In the first case, you say: "Look at that". In the second, you say: "Close your eyes"'. As he speaks the camera pans across faces to Olga, her eyes closed. At the end of the class, Olga leafs through still images of intertitles from Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion ofJoan ofArc ( 1 9 2 8), connecting her, via Dreyer's Joan, with Anna Karina's Nana in Godard's Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962): 'And the great victory? My martyrdom! And your deliverance? Death ! Tonight I will be in heaven [au paradis] '. At the airport prior to her departure from Sarajevo, Olga tells her Uncle Ramos (Rony Kramer) of her interest in suicide. She taps her fingers on the cover of a paperback copy of Midnight. Her uncle takes the book and quotes selectively from the sentence describing Elisabeth's suicide leap: 'And yet it did not feel to her as though she were falling; it seemed to her, on the contrary, that the earth . . . were rising towards her . . . with appalling speed' (p. 3 5 2). Like dream and reality (and life and death), the direction of movement-falling or rising-cannot be determined. Olga carries Midnight with her as she says goodbye to her uncle and Godard. The film does not show her death. Instead, Ramos phones Godard and reports how Olga entered an Israeli theatre with a backpack full of books instead of a bomb; told patrons they could leave, or stay and die for peace; and fell at the hands of Israeli sharp­ shooters responding to what they thought was a terrorist threat. Both Godard and Green sketch ambiguous afterlives for their suicidal protagonists. In Midnight, Agnel, whose name appropriately resembles both 'angel' and the Latin for 'lamb' (agnus, or agneau in French)-he is a model of Christian meekness-is 'lit up by radiant

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard happiness' and 'a smile of infinite kindness' (p. 3 5 2) as he reaches out to the fallen Elisabeth and pulls her skyward. Olga reappears in 'Paradise', the ironic final section of Notre Musique. 'Paradise' here is a wire-fenced garden whose gatekeeper is a U. S. soldier. He stamps Olga's wrist as if she were entering an amusement park. Green's presence in Godard's film is also ironic. Godard begins the talk that Olga attends by showing a photograph of a city in ruins and asking the class when it was taken. The students volunteer such cities as Warsaw, Berlin, Sarajevo and Hiroshima, and Godard responds: 'No, Richmond, Virginia, 1 86 5 , the American Civil War, North against South'. The seminar proceeds to associate a series of binaries revolving around the aesthetic and political recognition of difference: shot/reverse shot, man/woman, Jew/Muslim, Israelis/ Palestinians, fiction/documentary, the certainty of the imaginary/the uncertainty of reality. Green, insofar as the film implicates him by prominently displaying his novel, is injected the wrong way in this set of associations. His grandparents, paternal and maternal, were involved in the Civil War on the side of the South; his mother raised him on stories of their lost southern homeland. Scholar Michael O'Dwyer writes that in a 1 9 3 9 interview Green mentioned that 'he would like to explode the myth, prevailing in Europe since the pub­ lication of Uncle Tom s Cabin, that the South went to war in defence of slavery' (p. 5 80). Green's Elisabeth, with her dubious post-suicidal resurrection, may inspire Godard's Olga, but Green's imagination also kept him from seeing another side of American slavery, which places him strangely out of joint with Godard's film. Karla Oeler Julien Green. Midnight, 1 9 3 6. ---

. Minuit, 1 97 3 ·

Michael O'Dwyer. Georgia History i n Fiction, 1 998.

M ARTI N HEI DEG GER Being and Time JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994) presents a mysterious and personal reflection narrated by Jean-Luc Godard. During this segment, an image of him as a young boy appears sporadically, intercut with images depict­ ing trees in the forest, intimate rooms, the sea and pages from a notebook, into which book titles are written by hand. One of these is Sein und Zeit, the original German title of the treatise by Martin Heidegger known in English as Being and Time. As the title appears, Godard speaks of his youth, saying he had always been in mourning for himself. The context indicates a strong personal connection be­ tween Godard's self-portrait and Heidegger's book. Being and Time is one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century. It proposes that being is understood through a temporal frame. The main thesis of the book contends that since the ancient Greeks, humanity has unknowingly understood be­ ing through the lens of one temporal dimension: the present. In this silent tradition, only what is present could be understood as real, and what corresponds to eternity, which is the purest form of presence, is considered the highest and truest being: the idea for Plato, God in Christian theology. This privilege awarded to constant presence explains why becoming is excluded from true being. Being and Time locates the origin of this unilateral domination of presentness in humanity's relation to time. Human consciousness is for Heidegger essentially connected to time. Human beings can grasp reality because they are fundamentally 'opened'; this openness is of a temporal nature. Time itself should not be thought of as a suc­ cession of 'nows', but as an extatic unity (extatic in the etymological sense, 'ek' meaning 'out' in ancient Greek, and 'stasis', 'to stand'). Time is what is thoroughly out of itself: future, past and present belong to and define one another. Because humans are temporal, be­ cause what Heidegger calls human Dasein (humanity's way of being) is defined by its temporal openness, humans can understand, antici­ pate, remember and grasp. Furthermore, it is the future that first de­ termines time's extatic character. Correspondingly, it is the relation between Dasein and the future that defines its openness.

T

HE BEGINNING OF

Sein und Zeit. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1 9 2 7 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard In this regard, as Heidegger states in Being and Time (p. 36), pos­ sibility is higher than actuality. Humans formulate projects, and this projection is rendered possible by the opening that is the future. It is through the future that their existences gather meaning, and it is by way of projects that they first understand all beings that surround them. This relation to the future is connected to human Dasein's rela­ tion to death. Every individual human is defined by what Heidegger calls his or her ownmost possibility, the possibility of his or her own annihilation. This nothing, to which humans are opened, constitutes the original opening. The negation it unfolds is the out of extasy. Humanity's main problem, as diagnosed in Being and Time, is its relation to death. The unbearable nature of the possibility of death provokes our irresistible tendency to flee, which compels us to hold onto the present, the dimension of time apparently the most discon­ nected from death, to understand true being as what is constantly present: time as a succession of 'nows', and ourselves as subjects, present egos underlying all other changing attributes. What grants opening, total extatic time, is closed off through flight, and the un­ derstanding of being contracts into still life. In Chapter 2A, 'Seul le cinema' ( 1 998), of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), Godard plays on words, stating that cinema is the only way to tell a story ('raconter') and the only way to provoke awareness ('se rendre compte'). Why? He explains later: 'the history of cinema I is greater I than others I because it is projected' ( 1 998A, vol. 2 , p. 44). It is tempting for the reader of Being and Time to see in this a connection to what Heidegger establishes as the privilege of human Dasein. For Heidegger, humanity, because of its temporal openness, is able to understand being. Understanding is a proj ect; decipher­ ing a meaning is reading a path, interpreting possibilities. One of the most often-quoted definitions of humanity in Being and Time states that Dasein is a 'thrown project' (p. 1 92). How is cinematic projection to be connected with this? One must first recognise that the cinematic experience is, at least superficially, a spatialising of the temporal experience: the film is projected from behind, passes over the spectator, and happens in front, just as time, the obscure source to which we turn our back, which passes over us in an ungraspable instant, leaves us hoping to find focus ahead. Cinema also provokes a concrete experience of time: the mo­ tion picture imposes its time, which is not the case for literature

MARTIN H E I D E G G E R

o r painting. Like music, film is movement, indissociable from time, irreducible to the present, but as we feel sound penetrating us, 'in our ears', an image is always outside of our eyes, in the distance. Cinema, therefore, through proj ection, throws us out of ourselves, enacting what Heidegger would call Dasein's existence (existence understood here in the same etymological sense as extatic: to stand out). The final minutes of Chapter 4B of Histoire(s), 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), build to a crescendo during which cinema is said to be the 'shelter of time'. Here Godard modifies a quotation from Mau­ rice Blanchot's FRIENDSHIP ( 1 97 1 ) (p. 3 7), who was himself para­ phrasing Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism', which describes human language as the shelter or house of being (p. 2 3 9). At the beginning of this crescendo, Godard quotes Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, who speaks of the 'tyranny of the systematic organisation of time levelled as the instant' , stating that 'our time seeks the abolition of time' and revolting against what he calls 'the totalitarianism of the present as it is applied mechanically in a more oppressing manner every day on the scale of the entire planet' (pp. 46-47) ( 1 998A, vol. 4, pp. 2 86, 2 99). These statements have a strong Heideggerian resonance. With Being and Time, Heidegger hoped to reawaken the ques­ tion of being. He thought that because of humanity's flight in the face of death, because of its ensuing tendency to hold onto the pre­ sent, it closed off what granted it an opening to what being is in its full scope. In later works Heidegger would call this clenching impulse 'forgottenness of being' (2 0 1 2 , p. 1 9 1 ) . In Chapter 3 B of Histoire(s) , 'Une Vague nouvelle' ( 1 998), the following words appear on-screen: THE FUTURE COMES TO LIGHT I IN MEMORIES . Only through a unified experience o f time, freeing oneself from the sole present, can one truly see. Film projection is Godard's attempt at an awakening. It is his way of being in time. Franz-Emmanuel Schiirch Martin Heidegger. Being and Time, 2 0 r o . . Sein und Zeit, 2 006. --- . Etre et temps, l 992 . Maurice Blanchot. Friendship < 1 97 1 >, 1 99 7 · Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. ---

Martin Heidegger. Letter on 'Humanism' < 1 946>, 1 998.

. Contributions to Philosophy < 1 989>, 2 0 1 2 . Bernard Lamarche-Vadel. Bernard Lamai·che- Vadel: Entretiens, l 997.

---

M ART I N HEI DEG G ER Off the Beaten Track Martin Heidegger's Holzwege presents a prob­ lem of tra n s l ati o n in three languages. In Chapter l A, 'Toutes les histoires' ( 1 989/98), of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), Jean-Luc Godard reiterates the words Chemins qui ne menent nulle part (literally: 'Paths that Lead Nowhere' or 'Dead-Ends'), which form the title of the French translation of Holzwege. Off the Beaten Track is the English title, which has an appeal the French does not. Holzwege, Heidegger's original German title, means logging-path, but the word is also used metaphorically to indicate a wrong path. Drawing on the literal sense, Heidegger explains that the word Hol­ zwege refers to a path in the forest that has not yet been cleared and insists on the positive meaning the English translation emphasises. But what of Godard, who speaks the French words in his film? The phrase 'Chemins qui ne menent nulle part' is repeated three times in Histoire(s) du cinema as Godard discusses the power of Hol­ lywood, of Irving Thalberg thinking about fifty-two films a day, of Howard Hughes (while showing images of The Crowd [ 1 9 2 8 ] , Freaks [ 1 9 3 2] and Greed [ 1 9 24]) and of pornography. During this discussion, the following phrases appear successively: THE WORLD FOR A NICKEL I TRADE FOLLOWS FILMS I A FILM IS A GIRL AND A GUN ( 1 998A, vol. l , p. 3 3 ) . Godard apparently denounces how cinema capitalises o n greed to sell the crowd a girl and a gun and how cinema has provided a way to seduce the viewer. Heidegger's words would seem to mean a dead end. Nevertheless, a strange ambiguity arises from Godard's collage of images, texts and ideas. As he speaks pejoratively of the dream and seduction of Hollywood, he offers visions of despair and violence which are contrasted by images of dignity and profundi­ ty: Hollywood starlets inspire more respect than contempt. As the tirade on Hughes closes, Leonard Cohen sings 'I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind'. Repeating 'Chemins qui ne menent nulle part' while thinking about the works of dominant producers in the entertainment industry, could Godard be taking these words in their primal meaning, disregarding the intent of the work to which they refer? Or could it be that he plays on these words, on their

T

HE TITLE OF

Holzwege. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1 9 50.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard double meaning, dead end and off the beaten track, to indicate their conflicting but ambiguous possibilities? Heidegger not only chose this title for a collection of essays; he also selected it for his entire body of work. Planning an edition of his complete works before his death, he insisted they be introduced as 'Wege, nicht Werke' -paths, not works. A work is something pos­ ited as a whole, a present thing. In B EING AND TIME, Heidegger had contested the privilege that the Western tradition has awarded to the present as a primordial dimension of time and as a guideline in interpreting what is real. To Heidegger, his essays should not be taken as simple objects but as paths one must tread. Being is ultimately understood through time in confrontation with nothingness. Hei­ degger correlates truth with aletheia (the ancient Greek word for truth, which etymologically means un-veiling). Truth is not a given, a present fact, which one can dispose of as something reliable under one's control. It is a process in which one must engage and for which one must accept the surprising instability that lies in contrast. In Off the Beaten Track, an essay entitled 'The Age of the World Picture' indicates with more precision a way to understand how leaving the beaten track could be positive. This text interprets modernity as the rise of techno-science, which approaches nature and knowledge through the calculable and quantifiable. Heidegger demonstrates how this interpretation of modernity connects to the primacy of method, which stems from the primacy of the subject, the ego that frames the world in the picture it imposes on it, choos­ ing the most reliable one, the most stable one: what corresponds most exactly with constant presence is the totality of a mathematical set of given rules superimposed on nature. At the end of the essay, Heidegger proposes that 'Man will know the incalculable-that is, safeguard it in its truth-only in creative questioning' (p. 72). Why, in this light, could Hollywood films be thought of as dead ends? Evidently, one can make connections between Heidegger's critique of reducing things to what is calculable and Godard's cri­ tique of greed in Hollywood (fifty-two films a day). We can also con­ nect this greed to the way it operates, acquiring money by seducing the audience with sex and death. But there is another form of seduc­ tion in successful mainstream movies: the one provoked by intrigue. Suspense is seductive and it is one of the privileged techniques of what Godard has called the industry of lies. A suspenseful story does

q8

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

not aspire to reveal any truth; it simply aims to capture the attention of spectators, to draw them in and make them forget everything else while they are hooked on the suspense. Intrigue, in this sense, is the equivalent of the fixation on the present that Heidegger denounced in Western thought since the ancient Greeks. Clenching the present is a way of fleeing the truth of time's passing and the instability it implies. To flee by binding our attention to a suspenseful intrigue participates in this form of consolation, and thus its seductive nature. This can be criticised as a dead end, but it is also a quite beaten path; cinema, how­ ever, and for that matter Hollywood itself, is not limited to such flight. When he speaks of ROB ERTO RO S S ELLINI 's Rome, Open City ( 1 945) in 'Toutes les histoires', Godard states that cinema wishes to create not an event but a vision. He presents terrible images of the Sec­ ond World War and then, invoking Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator ( 1 940) and Fritz Lang's M ( 1 93 1), asserts that in ' [nineteen] forty I forty-one I even scratched to death I a simple rectangle I thirty-five millimetres I redeemed the honour I of all reality' ( 1 998A, vol. l , p. 86). 'Chemins qui ne menent nulle part' : cinema can be a seductive dead end or can redeem reality by straying off the beaten track of a girl and a gun. In Chapter 4A, 'Le Contr6le de l'univers' ( 1 998), Godard asserts that Hitchcock succeeded where the great conquerors-and, one might add, great producers-had failed. Hitchcock as 'the greatest creator of forms of the twentieth century' redeems reality with form by freeing simple objects from the intrigue. Godard explains: we have forgotten . . . I why Janet Leigh I stops at Bates Motel . . I and why exactly I the American government I has hired Ingrid Bergman I but I we remember I a purse I but I we re­ member I a bus in the desert I but I we remember . I a bunch of keys ( 1 998A, vol. 4, pp. 8 1 -82). .

.

.

And then, for the spectator, a bus in the desert is not forgotten, but remembered and appears as something real, as a being that is seen in contrast to the nothing, in its truth. Franz-Emmanuel Schurch Martin Heidegger. Off the Beaten Track, 2 002 .

. Holzwege, 20 1 5 . --- . Chemins qui n e menent nulle part, I 986. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire (s) du cinema, 4 vols. , 1 998A. ---

HENRI LANG LOI S The French Avant-garde

E HAD NO PAST,

Jean-Luc Godard declares in 'Une Vague nouvelle' ( 1 998), Chapter 3 B of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), about the post-war generation of cinephiles who attended film screenings at Henri Langlois' Cine­ matheque frarn;; a ise. But 'the man of the Avenue de Messine I gave us the gift of this past I metamorphosed into the present' ( l 998A, vol. 3 , p. 1 49). Already Godard signals something curious about Langlois' vision of film history: despite the collector's obsession with historical continuity, filiations and influences, his history-more accurately a tracing of the life of forms across history-deliberately traversed the usual boundaries between periods, genres and national schools. This experience of cinema even departed from time itself: re­ flecting on his childhood film-going, Langlois remarked that 'still today, time for me is a space' (2 0 1 4B, p. 7 3 9). Chronology had no place in this space. Godard, looking back on his Cinematheque years in an interview with Serge Daney for 'Une Vague nouvelle', remarked: 'this notion of coming before or after is something I had very late' ( 1 998T, p. 1 6 1). The films, screened back to back accord­ ing to the obscure formal linkages Langlois saw in them (a method shared, by curious coincidence, with Langlois' nemesis, the art histo­ rian ANDRE MALRAUX), were torn from their conventional historical moorings to reveal surprising things about each other in a 'place [the Cinematheque's screening room] without history' ( 1 998T, p. 1 6 2). There film history was learned not from books but through 'osmosis': 'I don't believe in . . . "education"', Langlois declared; 'true education is osmosis' (2 0 1 4B, p. 7 5 2 ) . Years later, Langlois' film pro­ jection montages would become Godard's video superimpositions in Histoire(s) du cinema, creating a more fluid form of osmosis. For Godard, Langlois, through his unorthodox screening prac­ tices, 'assembled [montait] history the way Eisenstein assembled [montait] his films, by hand, with just a pair of scissors and a splicer' ( l 99 l , p. 6). Langlois discovered the power of this mode of viewing quite early. In 'L'Avant-garde frarn;;aise', he relates its effect at a cine­ club screening he attended at the end of the silent era, before co-

W

D . C . D . L'Avant-garde franr;aise ( 1 9 1 7- 1 9 5 2). L'Age du cinema 6 (S u mmer 1 95 2), 8-1 5 .

1 80

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

founding the Cinematheque in 1 93 6 (p. 3 3 2). Much later, in a 1 97 2 interview published i n 1 974, soon before h e and Godard were to embark on a history of film on video, a project aborted by Langlois' death in 1 97 7 , he told the story of discovering the value of Yazujiro Ozu, a denigrated figure in France at the time, by accidentally slip­ ping a reel from an Ozu film in between reels by the much-preferred Mizoguchi and Kurosawa while lecturing on Japanese cinema: 'I began by praising the first two at the expense of the latter, but real­ ised that Ozu outshone them completely. A reel by Ozu sandwiched between Kurosawa and Mizoguchi made me understand his genius' (2 0 1 4B, p. 74 1 ) . Four years later Godard, embarking on the video history of cinema alone, also screened single reels of films back to back. Showing a reel from Germany, Year Zero ( 1 948) after a reel from Dracula ( 1 93 1 ) , he remarked that 'it wouldn't seem out of place at all to see Bela Lugosi' appear in the latter film: new insight into a film was due to 'the screening afterwards and to the light, the feedback, that a film by RO S S ELLINI cast on another monster' (2 0 1 4, pp. 3 1 9 and 3 79). This idea was already present in the 1 960s when, inspired by the alternating stories in William Faulkner's THE WILD PAL M S , Godard proposed projecting alternating reels of Made in U. S.A. ( 1 966) and Deux ou trois choses queje sais d'elle ( 1 967) ( 1 970, pp. 49-5 1 ) . Langlois thus 'made projection a kind o f production' ( 1 998v, p. 3 04). Godard also describes him as an essayist on a par with ERIC ROHMER ( 1 99 1 , p. 6) . In truth, Langlois was not such a good writer. His best attempts can be found in the brief evocative program notes he wrote for his screenings and events, where he could focus on what interested him: miniature appreciations of individual works, particu­ larly their mise en scene, acting and camerawork. More ambitious texts generally came up short. 'Notes on Film History', published in La Revue du Cinema in 1 948, just as Godard and his fellow cinephiles descended on the cinemas of Paris, is, paradoxically, a linear recita­ tion of fairly commonplace historical events. Langlois does better in essays on less grandiose topics in which he had a passionate interest, such as the pseudonymous 'The French Avant-garde', signed 'D.C.D. ' , phonetically 'Deceased' . Godard, like almost all post-war French critics, by no means shared Langlois' taste for the avant-garde's heyday of the 1 920s, referring to this work disparagingly in 1 95 8 as 'that whole bric-a-brac of effects which one now finds only . . . in amateur film festivals' ( 1 986H, p. 85). This

l8l

H EN R I LANG L O I S

widely-held view prompted Langlois, in a lengthy encomium to Jean Epstein following his premature death in 1 9 5 3 , to bitterly reproach Cahiers du Cinema, in the pages of the journal itself, for having cast such major inter-war talents into oblivion (20 1 4A, p. 3 3 6). Godard of course would glean material from the French avant­ garde essay for other purposes. In it Langlois, in keeping with his lifelong championing of the 'pure cinema' ideals of the 1 92 0s, praises Germaine Dulac's 1 9 2 0 film La Fete espagnole, written by Louis Delluc, for containing no intertitles, arguing that it requires the viewer to truly see the film rather than to read it; later cinematic landmarks, such as Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin ( 1 9 2 6), were indebt­ ed to it. 'Get rid of intertitles', he concluded (p. 3 3 0), something he indeed often did in his screening practices. Twenty years later, he expanded on this theme, remarking that dialogue in the talkies made cinema literary, which silent cinema never was (except, by implication, through the overuse of intertitles). A film was, instead, a 'physical presence' (2 0 1 4B, pp. 745-46) . In Montreal, Godard also consistently denounced the way spoken dialogue had made cinema literary, diminishing the supremacy of the image. He too rounded on silent film intertitles, complaining that Carl Theodor Dreyer, in The Passion ofJoan ofArc ( 1 9 2 8), 'didn't see the intertitles as images'­ an insight afforded by screening a reel of the film after a reel of Erich von Stroheim's Greed ( 1 924), which did use them this way (20 1 4, p. 1 l 3). Paradoxically, Histoire(s) du cinema sags under the weight of its intertitles, often superimposed on the image. Its video collages are an accelerated updating of the post-war Cinematheque screenings, confusing Langlois' life of forms with film history. Timothy Barnard Henri Langlois. L'Avant-garde franc,:aise, 1 9 1 7- 1 9 5 2 , 2 0 1 4. Jean-Luc Godard. Summer with Monika < 1 95 8>, l 986H.

. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. --- . Histoire (s) du cinema: Godard fait des histoires ( 1 988), l 998T.

---

. J'ai toujours pense que le cinema etait un instrument de pensee, l 998v.

---

---

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

Henri Langlois. Jean Epstein ( 1 95 3), 2 0 1 4A. --- . Le Septieme Ciel ( 1 974), 2 0 1 4B. Huguette Marquand Ferreux. Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois, 3 vols. , 1 99 ! . Richard Roud. Godard ( 1 967), 1 970.

EM M ANU EL LEV I NAS Time and the O ther charms and felicities of Jean-Luc God­ ard's unorthodox use of stereoscopy in Adieu au langage (20 1 4), we find a crucial reliance on books. These texts serve not just as sources of the quotations which provide nearly all of the film's dialogue and spoken narration, but as significant objects in the mise en scene. In the first of two prologues which set the film in motion, a scene unfolds around a makeshift bookstall across the street from a cultural centre in the Swiss town of Nyon. A philosophy profes­ sor named Davidson (Christian Gregori), a woman and two young students-a red-haired girl called Marie (Marie Ruchat) and her un­ named male companion-engage in a casual discussion about the lingering implications of 'Hitler's Victory', as Davidson puts it while referencing a text written by Jacques Ellul. That is, they ponder the extent to which ever more complicated, seemingly less hostile forms of totalitarianism have encroached on their everyday lives-their relationships, ways of speaking, physical gestures and constant use of technology. At one point, Davidson and the two students gather around a table piled with used books. The frame, which is slightly Dutch-tilted, omits each of their faces, capturing just their torsos and hands. The shot stages a gestural contrast vis-a-vis different media: Davidson and the male student fiddle with their smartphones while Marie, in the more immediate foreground, flips through a set of books, the titles of which are legible to the spectator. At the precise instant that a foreboding Mercedes sedan coasts through the background (in the visual space between Davidson and the male stu­ dent), Marie picks up and examines Le Temps et l'autre by Emmanuel Levinas. This is a remarkably multifaceted reference, starting with its compositional aspect. The orange-red cover of the separately pub­ lished paperback edition of Levinas' essay 'Time and the Other' issued by Presses universitaires de France rhymes chromatically with several details in the scene spanning multiple shots: the signage of the cultural venue, the beret of an extra located in the background,

A

MONG THE MANY

Le Temps et l'autre. Le Chaix, le monde, !'existence. Grenoble : B. Arthaud, 1 947, 1 2 5-96.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard a fire hydrant, the marquee of an Indian restaurant, the umbrella at the bookstall and, not least, Marie's coiled hair. The colour motif thus encourages us to keep an eye out for curious resonances be­ tween subjects, and between subjects and objects, distributed across separate planes of the 3 D image. The 'reveal' of Levinas' book is slow-building and playfully intricate, involving different characters. When we first glimpse its colour-coded presence in the scene, the older woman studies it while its cover remains obscured from our view. When we can at last read its markings, Godard's use of 3 D makes the book appear tangible. Through a delicate effect o f nega­ tive parallax, the book juts out at the boundary of the screen, as if it lies within our reach, too. In the scene's intertextual weave, 'Time and the Other' plays a counteractive role in two related senses. First, the addition of Levinas offsets the element of anti-Semitism associated controversially with other authors whose books also feature in the scene: EZRA POUND, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and FYODOR DO STOEVSKY (whose novels were nevertheless a major influence on Levinas). In other words, Levinas, a Jewish thinker, stands out in the assemblage of books as a kind of check against the other authors' racist deficiencies. (As such, his presence in the scene elliptically refers us back to the film's opening, where intertitles allude to the 'non-thought' of MARTIN HEIDEGGER 's alliance with Nazism.) Second, this use of Levinas in­ terjects a philosophy of the interpersonal encounter which possibly stands to undo 'Hitler's Victory' . The book's gestation traces back to the notebooks the French philosopher filled while detained in a German prisoner of war labour camp during the Second World War, in special barracks for captured Jewish soldiers. Published in France in 1 947, 'Time and the Other' consists of lectures which carve out the founding conditions for a 'phenomenology of alterity', which devotes itself in the main to preserving the irreducible 'mystery' of the other person, whose well-being takes ethical priority over that of the self, over the 'I' of the Cogito. Nowhere does Adieu au langage quote directly from the text (there are, however, vocal recitations from Levinas' Totality and Infin­ ity [ r 96 r ]), but this allusion to Levinas' ideas initiates a key reflective thread in the film, a prolonged engagement with the sensory and linguistic variables of self/other interaction as considered by think­ ers ranging from JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN to

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard and PAUL VALERY. This thread informs the film's bifurcated story involving two young couples who try (and fail) to negotiate a mutually revitalising form of amorous intimacy. And, just as importantly, this line of thinking inspires Godard's attempt to augment the perceptual and ethical aptitudes of the spectator. In due course, a stray lurcher dog named Roxy (Godard's pet with Anne-Marie Mieville, his occasional collaborator of many years with whom he also has a personal relationship) becomes a central intercessor for the film's project-a figure whose acute perception and enhanced capacity for selfless love hold out the utopian potential for a revolutionary transformation. At that point in the film, as the idiolect of Godard takes over through repeated articulations of 'the outside', 'the forest' and 'the other world', it seems as if Levinasian concepts only obliquely underpin the film's drama of ideas. After all, Levinas, as is well known, did not embrace non-human life in his ethical framework. Be that as it may, it is possible to understand Roxy's function as referring to Levinas' short text 'The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights', a rare instance in which Levinas appears to extend an ethical status to the animal kingdom. There he salutes a mongrel canine, 'Bobby', who strayed into the camp where he and fellow Jewish soldiers were interned during the war, restoring their sense of dignity. Levinas was a pivotal thinker for the ethical turn of much French philosophy in the fallout of May 1 968. To some degree his argu­ ments supply a lens through which Adieu au langage reflects back on and reconsiders Godard's militant stage. With a view to rekindling forms of resistance-albeit in a calmer, more speculative mood-the film begins not with the assumption of an entire collective waiting to be spurred into action by the proper ideological discourse, but instead with the difficult struggle to establish and sustain a loving, dialogical bond between just two.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

Rick Warner Emmanuel Levinas. Time and the Other and Additional Essays, 1 98 7 . ---

---

. Le Temps e t l'autre, 1 979· . The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights < 1 975>, 1 997·

J AC K LONDON Nam-Bok the Unveracious Jack London's sympathetic col­ lection of short stories about the native peoples of north­ west Canada, was published in 1 902 . Three decades later, Louis Postif translated it into French as Les Enfants du froid. Jack London enjoys the stature of a major author in France: Jean-Luc Godard associates him with Joseph Conrad and WILLIAM FAULKNER in Pierrot leJou ( 1 965), and he continued to read and remember Lon­ don after that time. In Chapter l A, 'Toutes les histoires' ( 1 989/98), of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), he would quote London's science fiction novel The Star Rover ( 1 9 1 5), comparing himself to protagonist Darrell Standing, who escapes the tedium and torture of prison by taking inward voyages to the world of imagination. Despite London's reputation in France, Les Enfants dufroid went out of print, and no new French edition appeared for decades. Godard may have known the book since boyhood, but his extensive use of it in Bande a part ( 1 964) suggests that he consulted a more recent edition. The year before, in fact, a London publisher issued a new edition of Children of the Frost. First appearing in Ainslee 's Magazine, 'Nam-Bok the Unvera­ cious', widely seen as the best story in the volume, captured Godard's imagination. As Odile (Anna Karina) and Franz (Sarni Frey) in Bande a part imagine what they will do with the money they plan to steal, Franz expresses his wish to visit Jack London country. 'He wrote some terrific books', he tells Odile. Franz's enjoyment of]ack Lon­ don suits his fascination with American literature and culture, but the exotic settings and primitive characters in Children of the Frost also appeal to him. To verify London's storytelling ability, Franz summarises the plot of 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious', without specifi­ cally identifying the story or naming its eponymous hero. In Franz's version, an Indigenous North American establishes such a huge rep­ utation for lying that the native villagers banish him, sending him off in a canoe and telling him not to return until he can tell the truth. When he comes home after a two-year absence, they ask about his trip. Consequently, he describes what he saw: railroads, aeroplanes and buildings that reach towards the sky. Finding him as big a liar as ever, they banish him again, this time for good.

C

HILDREN OF THE FROST,

Nam-Bok the Unveracious. Ainslee 's Magazine, August 1 90 2 , 2 9-3 7 .

1 86

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

Franz's version of 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious' changes the original story significantly. In London's tale, Nam-Bok leaves his community by accident: his kayak veers off course and drifts out to sea. In Franz's version, the young man is initially ostracised from his community for telling lies. His early behaviour thus establishes a precedent by which the members of his community can gauge his later behaviour, and they subsequently interpret his truths as lies. Franz's version eliminates the ambiguity and supernatural implica­ tions of London's original. Since Nam-Bok has no history of telling lies in London's story, the native villagers have more difficulty dis­ cerning his precise identity upon his return. Did Nam-Bok become a liar while he was away, or is the mysterious figure who appears be­ fore them the spirit of Nam-Bok visiting from the world of shadows, a mystic presence whose strange tales strike fear into the primitive people? In both London's original and Franz's version, the community metes out swift justice to liars, but in neither version is the commu­ nity a utopia. What Nam-Bok tells the native villagers upon his re­ turn are not lies. They are truths, but truths so alien to his old friends and neighbours that they are unsure how to interpret what he says. They cannot accept what he tells them at face value. Their intoler­ ance towards liars prevents them from acknowledging advances in science and technology and keeps their minds closed, withholding new ideas from acceptance-or even consideration. 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious' has implications beyond Bande a part. Godard has often used literary allusion to link his films to­ gether. Frequently he plants ideas in one film that he cultivates in another. Sometimes he has used a later film to gloss an earlier one. The summary of 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious' in Bande a part, for example, glosses a film Godard had directed the previous year, Les Carabiniers. As the present author has observed elsewhere, 'the ac­ tion of this film mirrors the action of London's story' (p. 5). Towards the end of Les Carabiniers, the two protagonists return home from war with a satchel full of postcards. They display the images to the women they had left behind and try to convince them that they now own the obj ects the postcards depict. 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious' also contains an explicit reference to the cinema, which is remarkable given the date of the story. Unable to persuade his old friends and family of the truth of anything he has

JACK LONDON

seen, Nam-Bok considers telling them about motion pictures and phonograph records-'machines wherein visions of living men were to be seen' and 'machines from which come the voices of men' -but decides against it (p. 7 3). The villagers have such difficulty accepting the real that he recognises how impossible it would be for them to accept the mechanical reproduction of reality. Godard's allusion to 'Nam-Bok the Unveracious' functions as a comment on his creative vision, as well. Throughout his career, he has been attracted to literary works which can be interpreted as analogues for the cinema and literary characters who assume the task of convincing the incredulous. In The Signs among Us ( 1 9 1 9), the novel that inspired Chapter 4B , 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), of Histoire(s) du cinema, C HARLES F ERDINAND RAMUZ tells the story of a colporteur or itinerant peddler who enters a Swiss village and, in the face of a terrible storm that goes on for days, attempts to con­ vince the villagers that the end of the world is near. Once the sun finally emerges, the villagers kick him out. THE PEDDLER WAS CINEMA, Godard concludes ( 1 998A, vol. 4 , pp. 2 3 0-3 9). Nam-bok, too, is cinema. Like the filmmaker, he faces a daunting task. Nam­ bok must convince his sceptical audience to understand him and to accept what he says as the truth, no matter how unbelievable it may seem. Kevin ]. Hayes Jack London. Nam-Bok the Unveracious, 1 96 3 . ---

. Nam-Bok le hableur, 1 999·

Kevin ]. Hayes. Nam-Bok and the New Wave, 201 r .

ANDRE M ALRAU X Man 's Hope Andre Malraux has been a touchstone for Jean­ Luc Godard from an early age, as has the mythical personage himself. Even before the post-war art histories, beginning with the three-volume THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART in 1 947-50 which had such an influence on Godard's conception and practice of film history, there were the pre-war novels, particularly the Goncourt Prize-winning Man 's Fate ( 1 9 3 3) on the Chinese Revolution and L'Espoir ( l 93 7) on the Spanish Civil War, drawing on Malraux's expe­ riences in south-east Asia and his volunteer military service against fascism in Spain. These adventures were encountered by a teenaged, romantic Godard whose first ambition was to become a novelist. Malraux also made a film based on Man 's Hope, heralding neo-real­ ism in its style; entitled Sierra de Teruel and completed in 1 939, it was banned in France before any public exhibition could take place and then released with slight revisions after the war, in 1 945, as Espoir. Critics have long noted Malraux's use of ellipses in his novels. ANDRE BAZIN, for example, writing on the occasion of Espoir's release, noted that 'contemporary novelists share the desire to use ellipses to introduce discontinuity, both temporal and spatial, into the story in order to prevent our mind from automatically organising reality according to the logic of appearances, to prevent us from giving it meaning . . . . Malraux's aesthetic is one of a discontinuous selection of moments. The narrative chain is deliberately broken. Only a few shattered links from this chain mark the changes in the action, which even an attentive reader cannot always completely recreate' (p. 1 9). Malraux wrote to Bazin to praise his insight, remarking that, insofar as these remarks also applied to his film, they were not the result of the film's difficult production circumstances; rather, they 'arose out of the film's style' (p. 1 64) . True to his vocation as a novelist of ideas, Malraux sometimes smuggled his nascent theories of art history into Man 's Hope. In one scene, Manuel enters a church whose interior had been burnt to a crisp: 'The church's entire interior was black . . . . The plaster statues, scoured to the whiteness of chalk by the fire, were like tall pallid blots at the foot of sooty columns . . . . These contorted statues had found

T

HE WORK OF

L'Espoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 3 7 ·

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard in the extinguished fire a savage grandeur, as if their dance had been born here of these flames, as if this style had suddenly become that of the fire itself' ( 1 996, pp. 1 49-50). In his later art histories, Malraux would call this an artwork's metamorphosis, the central theme of his I MAGINARY MUSEUM. Through metamorphosis, an artwork is re­ purposed by a new era and properly removed from its time. Godard, writing in 1 95 7 , remarked: 'Genius, Malraux wrote somewhere [in volume two of his P SYCHOLOGY OF ART] , is born like a fire. Out of what it burns. The reason The Rules of the Game [ 1 9 3 9] was misunderstood in its time was that it burned, razed, The Crime of Monsieur Lange [ 1 9 3 6] ' ( 1 998E, p. l 1 8). Godard would no doubt acknowledge Malraux's Spanish church as an example of what he, Godard, described in a later reproach to Malraux's volumes of art history as a 'living' imaginary museum-not the gutted church itself, but the vital social forces condensed in the image of it. Malraux was long interested in the cinema, and in 1 934 prepared with Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow a screenplay for Man 's Fate; like every proposed Malraux adaptation since, it was never made. Ref­ erences to Man 's Hope (and to S KETCH FOR A P SYCHOLOGY OF THE CINEMA) and images from Espoir-along with a photograph of Mal­ raux-can be found in the long rumination on the Second World War in Chapter l B , 'Une Histoire seule' ( 1 989/98), of Histoire (s) du cinema ( l 989-98). 'And if the death of Puig I and the Negus [characters in Man 's Hope] . . . I were inaudible I it is because life never I gave back to film I what it stole from it' (this latter remark lifted from Louis Delluc), Godard intones in voice-over. Then: 'the element of cinema I in war footage I speaks not I it does not judge I never a close-up I suffering is not a star I nor the burned-out church I nor the devastated landscape' ( 1 998A, vol. l , pp. 1 06, l 1 9). Interestingly, the burned-out church appears in Malraux's novel but not in his film. Godard and his generation envied Malraux his opportunities for adventure and heroism, lamenting that they had no Spain to fight for, no Resistance to join. That Malraux's heroism was, it turned out, greatly embellished, did little to lower Godard's esteem. Nor, ini­ tially, was this regard diminished by Malraux's political conversion to Gaullism after the war and his entry into government as minister of culture in 1 959, no doubt in part because of his official support for the early Nouvelle Vague. As the Nouvelle Vague veered left and into more daring topics, however, a rupture ensued over the censorship

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard of the movement's films. Later, in 1 968, Malraux would sack HENRI LANGLOI S , head and co-founder of the Cinematheque franc;aise, where Godard had received his film education, setting off an inter­ national protest and igniting one of the principal fuses of the May 1 968 uprising in France. Godard, Malraux's most fervent admirer in the group, broke with him in 1 966 when he refused to intervene, as he had two years earlier with Godard's own film Une Femme mariee: Fragments d'un film tourne en 1964, in the censor's decision to ban The Nun, directed by JAC QUES RIVETTE and starring Godard's estranged wife Anna Karina. Godard responded with a scathing and incendiary open letter to Malraux in a Paris newspaper which landed devastating blows on the hero of the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance: I was beginning to become sick of going to see you each time and asking you to intervene . . . to obtain mercy for a film condemned to death by censorship, that Gestapo of the mind. But, heaven above, I truly didn't think I would have to do it for your brother, Diderot, a journalist and writer like you, and his Nun, my sister. . . . Above all, don't speak to me of Spain, Buda­ pest or Auschwitz . . . . I am certain, dear Andre Malraux, that you will definitely understand nothing in this letter in which I speak to you for the last time, submerged in hate . . . . It is not at all surprising that you do not recognise my voice when l speak to you of the murder of Suzanne Simonin, la religieuse de Diderot. No. Nothing surprising in that profound cowardice. You're hiding your head in the sand with your inner memoirs. How then could you hear me, Andre Malraux, I who am calling you from abroad, from a distant land, from Free France ( 1 998K, pp. 2 85-86).

And yet a quarter-century later Malraux still haunted Godard's thoughts and permeated his own imaginary museum of the cinema. Timothy Barnard Andre Malraux. Man 's Hope, 1 979· ---

. L'Espoir, 1 996.

Andre Bazin. Espoir: On Style in the Cinema < 1 945>, 2 0 2 2 B . Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. ---

. Jean Renoir ( 1 9 5 7), l 998E.

--- . Lettre au Ministre de la 'Kultur' ( 1 966), l 998K. Andre Malraux. Une Lettre d'Andre Malraux ( 1 946), 1 9 8 3 .

AN DRE M ALRAU X Sketch for a Psychology of the Cinema

E NDR MALRAUX

was prompted to write the essay 'Esquisse d'une psychologie du cinema', his most substantive discus­ sion of cinema, by the experience of making his only film, Sierra de Teruel!Espoir ( 1 93 9/45), based on his 1 9 3 7 novel MAN ' S HOPE. It initially appeared in the French and English editions of the deluxe art journal Verve during the war (the English version is an en­ tirely inadequate translation, since reprinted, and will not be quoted here) and was reprinted with minor revisions by Gallimard in 1 946 as a large-format 64-page booklet, although it is only some 5 ,000 words in length. Later still Malraux incorporated much of the essay into his influential volumes on art history, which began to appear in the late 1 940s under the title THE P SYCHOLOGY OF ART. Jean-Luc Godard's mother owned a copy of the essay and he read it at an early age after the war. It was a key formative influ­ ence on his thinking about film, as it was for most film critics in the post-war period. He read aloud parts of the text (modified as was his wont) for inclusion in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), but in the end this material was not used. The 'script' he prepared shows him working directly from photocopied fragments of the 1 946 edition, rewriting parts by hand: Tolstoy is replaced by (William) FAULKNER (closer to Godard 's heart, and still a favourite of Malraux's) and Marlene (Dietrich) becomes Marilyn (Monroe) ( 1 998R, pp. 1 8 3-84). Malraux's essay was probably the first time Godard encountered the legend that D.W Griffith had invented the close-up by moving the camera closer to an actress' face, a legend he was still invok­ ing decades later. But whereas Malraux saw this technique as the invention of the concept later embraced by Andre Bazin, DECOUPAGE, Godard, perversely, interprets it as the birth, not even of assembly ('editing'), but of montage: ' [Griffith] wasn't trying to see some­ one closer up; he wanted to bring together something far away and something near at hand' (2 0 1 4, p. 2 2 3). Malraux argues in the 'Sketch' that painting had reached an im­ passe in the modern world due to its fundamental inability to depict movement, and that there was a concomitant rise of technologically

A

Esquisse d'une psychologie du cinema. Verve 8, v ol. 2 Qune 1 940), 69-7 3 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard reproducible forms of art. In his 1 93 6 speech 'The Cultural Herit­ age', in which he referenced Walter Benjamin (alluding to but not naming his famous essay, published in French translation a year ear­ lier), Malraux claimed that a film was intended 'for reproduction [to the point that] the original no longer exists'. From this he concluded that henceforth 'every high philosophy or work of art contains in it­ self the possibility of an infinite number of reincarnations' ( 1 936, pp. 3 l 5, 3 l 7 ), a notion that would inform his later art history volumes. Malraux had announced the main thesis of the 'Sketch', the pri­ macy of cinema as the art of the century, in this very Godardian formulation in an interview in 1 934: 'In cinema there is another way of writing with something other than words, which may even kill writing . . . the image killing the word' ( 1 97 7 , p. 1 5 8). 'No "artistic" discovery', he wrote in the 'Sketch', 'would enable artists to master movement. What the Baroque called out for . . . was not a modifica­ tion of the image but a sequence of images' (2 0 1 4, p. 7). For Mal­ raux this sequencing was the work of decoupage, a term he learned while making his film-production personnel use a decoupage, or shooting script-but whose wider conceptual possibilities he quickly grasped as none before him had. For Malraux this sequencing, con­ trary to conventional wisdom today (which views it as the product of assembly), was the work of the camera while filming; in a footnote to his text inexplicably omitted from the English translation, he re­ marks: 'the shot is the cinematic unit. Shots change when the camera changes places. Decoupage is the sequence of shots' (20 1 4, p. 8) . Still today some scholars inexplicably describe Malraux as speaking about montage or assembly and not decoupage in his essay. Jean-Luc Godard took issue with Malraux's sequences of shots in one of his very first pieces of film criticism, in 1 95 2 . His com­ ments in a long parenthetical aside serve as a fascinating early ex­ ample of his method of imperceptibly weaving reworked quotations of other authors into his own work: (It is not in terms of freedom and destiny that cinematic mise en scene is judged, but rather the force with which genius attacks objects with constant inventiveness . . . . Its goal is not to express, but to represent. For the great representational effort that had become bogged down in the Baroque to carry on [this is a di­ rect quo tati o n of Malraux's 'Sketch', the first passage to name decoupage, providing the footnote quoted above] , the camera,

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film director and cinematographer had to become inseparable from the scene being depicted [this is an inversion of Malraux's formula 'the camera had to be made independent of the scene being depicted'] . The problem thus does not lie, contrary to what Andre Malraux says, in the sequencing of shots, but rather in the actor's movements within the frame.) ( 1 998c, p. 7 8) How can we reconcile this extraordinary statement with God­ ard's reputation as a 'montage' filmmaker? For this was by no means a youthful opinion that was abandoned once he began making films. The answer lies in the fact that Malraux's decoupage is not mon­ tage, which does not create narrative sequences the way classical decoupage does through shot changes, and with them narrative (and visual) continuity-continuity which Godard's films seek at all costs to avoid. Hence Godard's deeply-held anti-classical decoupage stance (he has also never used a conventional written decoupage). But Godard, whose films are widely considered montage films, intervening in reality and manipulating the film once shot while disregarding classical decoupage sequencing, is deeply indebted to a different conception of decoupage, theorised by Bazin and practised by ROBERTO RO S S ELLINI . We need think only of the extended scenes with cast and crew squeezed into a tiny Parisian garret in A bout de souffie ( 1 960), or roaming about an airy Roman flat in Le Mepris ( 1 96 3 ), to gauge Godard's commitment to representing the 'move­ ments of his characters in the frame'. The classical decoupage tech­ nique of fragmenting scenes with the camera is rej ected in favour of a holy trinity of director, camera (operator) and actor, depicting reality by fusing with it in its duration. Then again, within six months, in the pages of the same Cahiers du Cinema, Godard would contradict himself by refuting, this time, Andre Bazin's essay 'Decoupage'. There he expresses admiration for the classical decoupage of American film he would never practise. Timothy Barnard Andre Malraux. Sketch for a Psychology of the Moving Pictures, 1 968. ---

. Esquisse d'une psychologie du cinema, 2 0 1 4.

Jean-Luc Godard. Suprematie du sujet ( 1 95 2), l 998c. ---

---

. Textes pour servir aux Histoire(s) du cinema (n.d.), l 998R.

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

Andre Malraux. The Cultural Heritage < 1 936>, 1 93 6 . Robert S . Thornberry. Andre Malraux e t l'Espagne, l 977.

ANDRE M ALRAU X The Psychology ofA rt

0 F ALL THE WORKS

which inform Jean-Luc Godard's multi­ part video Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), Andre Malraux's numerous volumes on art can safely be claimed to have exerted the most fundamental influence, whose method paralleled that of the contemporaneous Cinematheque screenings mounted by HENRI LANGLOI S . Begun as a series of articles in the journal Verve before the Second World War, Malraux's art books were more prop­ erly illustrated essays than history books; the art historian E.H. Gombrich declined to call them histories, remarking that 'there is no evidence that Malraux has done a day's consecutive reading in a library' (p. 78). (Malraux may have anticipated this criticism: 'It is not research-work that has led to an understanding of El Greco; it is modern art' [ 1 9 5 3 , p. 68] .) After the war these essays multiplied like rabbits. Psychologie de l'art, the first of two three-volume sets (a third set appeared in the 1 970s), written while working as General de Gaulle's chief propagan­ dist, began to appear (and was almost immediately translated) just as Godard was coming of age in the late 1 940s. Les Voix du silence, a cut­ and-paste single-volume abridgement of this set, came out in 1 95 l (the English edition, The Voices of Silence, first appearing in 1 9 5 3 and more widely available than The Psychology ofArt, will be quoted here). The second three-volume set, THE I MAGINARY MUSEUM OF WORLD SCULPTURE (never translated), was published from 1 9 5 2 to 1 954· The 1 950s produced two more art books: Saturn, on Goya ( 1 950), and The Metamorphosis of the Gods ( 1 9 5 7 ). The Psychology ofArt, and in particu­ lar its first volume, is the subject of the present entry, while the World Sculpture set is discussed in the following entry. Gombrich names 1 92 0s Expressionism, with its emphasis on the subjective, as a major influence on Malraux's ideas, deeming his work essentially retrograde in this respect. Further influences were the art historians ELIE FAURE and Henri Focillon, working from the teens to the early 1 9 30s. Each influenced both the writing style and the focus on artistic form and style: art, for Malraux, in a formulation Godard relishes quoting, is the process whereby 'forms are transmuted into style' ( 1 956, p. 2 7 2). And style, for Malraux, was paramount.

Psychologie de l 'a rt, 3 vols. Paris: Albert Skira, 1 94 7-49 .

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Malraux's writing has its own peculiar style: cryptic and aphoristic, with nary a footnote to be found (with the exception of a handful in just one of the three Psychology volumes). Brigitte Friang reports that the text of The Psychology ofArt-and not just the photographic illustrations for World Sculpture, as suggested by the famous (staged) image of Malraux working on the second volume of the set in 1 9 5 3 with a couple o f hundred photographs a t his feet a s h e selected their juxtapositions-was assembled with scissors and glue (p. 46). The first of the Psychology volumes, Le Musee imaginaire ( 1 947) (translated as The Museum without Walls, 1 949; a pocketbook edition appeared in French in 1 96 5 , re-introducing it to a new generation), into which the essay S KETCH FOR A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CINEMA was folded, sets out Malraux's program, identified in the title of the volume itself. Affordable photographic reproduction of artworks in books would upset centuries of art viewing practice, making it no longer necessary to visit museums to view unique works of art. Pho­ tographic reproduction would let us create our own 'imaginary mu­ seum' in which, significantly, works of disparate eras and provenance could be directly juxtaposed, a radical notion at the time. As with any comparative method, it shifted the terrain, as Malraux explained in a speech dating from 1 974: 'Beauty [the quest for which he claims marked nineteenth-century art history] implied an aesthetic; the im­ aginary museum raises questions' ( 1 976, p. 946). Traditional histori­ cal categories, and the work's social context, were cast off: only form and style mattered. The juxtaposition of photographs of artworks in fragmented form strips them of their specificity, but reveals their common style, even across vast distances of time and space ( 1 956, p. 2 l ). In Malraux, art was viewed through a lens peculiarly subj ective at the same time as it was made anonymous-one of the many ways Godard's film history project would resemble it. In the imaginary museum-that flood of artworks poised, in Malraux's time, to spill beyond the physical museum and flood our homes and minds-artworks would thus cease to be seen as rooted in a precise time and place, returning the artwork to the status of art in Antiquity ( 1 956, p. 1 7). A metamorphosis of the artwork, Mal­ raux's central concept, would thus be effected, replicating that found in social processes outside the art book and museum, an example of which we saw in his novel MAN ' s HOPE. Shorn of their context, artworks would mean something different to later eras than they

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard did to their own: genius becomes perennial by constantly modifying its language after death, thereby establishing not a monologue but an ever-renewed dialogue with its viewers across the ages ( 1 956, p. 69). Gombrich concluded that Malraux's metamorphosis placed him in the company (or the shadow) of art history's great 'backwards­ looking prophets' such as Winkelmann and Ruskin (p. 78). Some of these ideas can be found in Faure and Focillon. Frag­ menting was already established by Faure in the l 9 r os as a legiti­ mate technique. Focillon (never mentioned by Godard), in his 1 934 volume The Life of Forms, remarks that 'forms are subjected to the principle of metamorphosis, by which they are perpetually renewed' (p. 41). Note, however, that the essence of Malraux's concept meta­ morphosis was articulated as early as his 1 93 0 novel The Royal Way (and again in Man 's Hope). And just as Malraux would see formal equivalences between works of vastly different origins, F ocillon pos­ ited a cyclical artistic trajectory common to all eras, making possi­ ble resemblances between works from different epochs but from the same stage of the cycle (experimental, classical, refined, baroque). The timing of The Psychology ofArt's publication was uncanny: Godard may have encountered it as early as 1 947, just after land­ ing in Paris at the age of sixteen. So too the influence of Malraux's method was wide-ranging and long-lasting. It granted Godard li­ cence to disregard historical chronology, to compare, to valorise so­ called minor work, to esteem style and form above all else. Malraux predicted photographic reproduction would usher in a new era: 'the whole world's painting is about to permeate our culture' ( 1 956, p. 30). Godard, in Histoire (s) du cinema, created an even more copious compendium of the cinematic canon. Neither foresaw that the me­ dia they employed would unleash forms sufficient unto themselves, burying these canons in an undifferentiated flow of images. Timothy Barnard Andre Malraux. The Psychology ofArt, 3 vols. , 1 949-50.

. The Voices of Silence < 1 95 1 >, 1 956. Henri Focillon. The Life ofForms in Art < 1 934>, 1 99 2 . Brigitte Friang. Un Autre Malraux, 1 97 7 ·

---

E.H. Gombrich. Andre Malraux and the Crisis of Expressionism ( 1 9 54),

1 96 3 . Andre Malraux. Inauguration de !'exposition 'Andre Malraux e t l e musee imaginaire' , 1 976.

ANDRE M ALRAU X The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture

E NDR

MALRAUX's method of juxtaposition in his art books created infinite possibilities, one might say indiscriminately, for works of art to shine light on one another, revealing a common style. His three-volume PSYC HOLOGY OF ART in the late 1 940s was followed up in the early 1 950s with the three-volume Le Musee imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale (never translated into English), whose first volume, La Statuaire ( 1 95 2), is discussed in the present entry. Although the previous set of essays had been amply illustrated, it was here that Malraux really put his method of frag­ menting and juxtaposing works of art into practice. As he remarked in the Psychology, the classical aesthetic had proceeded from the part to the whole, but the aesthetic of our era proceeds from the whole to the fragment ( 1 956, p. 3 0). In the illustrated 5 5 -page introduction to Statuary, before it is turned over to more than 700 pages of photographic diptyches juxtaposing disparate fragments of statuary, torn from their context, Malraux remarks: 'no doubt we cannot speak of the Chartres kings as Cubist statues, and yet we cannot truly look at them in the same way' ( 1 9 5 2 , p. 5 1 ). Taking the same frame of reference, Theodor Adorno remarked that Cubist collage had been vindicated by aerial photo­ graphs of bombed-out German cities (p. 3 0 1 ) . Malraux's idea of the past reaching into the present can be found in this idiosyncratic turn of phrase in a 1 9 3 6 speech (pasted into volume two of the Psychology) : Antiquity did not 'make' the Renaissance; rather, the Renaissance 'made' Antiquity ( 1 956, p. 2 7 1 ) . (This was reworked by Fritz Lang in Le Mepris [ 1 963] as 'the gods have not created man; man has cre­ ated gods'.) Thus 'every great art modifies those that arose before it; after van Gogh Rembrandt has never been quite the same' ( 1 956, p. 68). Jean-Pierre Zarader argues that Malraux's metamorphosis is as a result essentially Hegelian (despite Malraux's insistence it was anti-Hegelian), as it involves sublation (p. 1 66). Here, however, the dialectic is working in reverse: the present is sublated into the past. Malraux's method was made even more revelatory by his fre­ quent use of 'unknown' or 'invisible' work from supposedly minor

A

Le Musee imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale, 3 vols. Paris: Gallirnard, l 9 5 2 - l 9 5 4.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard periods or traditions: 'the mystery of little-known civilisations does not always affect us less than the prestige of illustrious civilisations, and it does so in more disturbing and revelatory ways' ( 1 9 5 2 , p. 5 5). Can we liken this approach to the equally unorthodox recourse by the young film critic Jean-Luc Godard during these same years to so-called minor cinema (B-grade Hollywood films in particular)? Curiously, however, whereas in the 1 9 50s Godard wrote about contemporary cinema, twentieth-century art is largely absent from Malraux's entire written oeuvre: Statuary stops at 1 900. The introduction to Statuary provides an example of the method: in the midst of a discussion of the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century sculptor Giovanni Pisano, the reader turns the page and is confronted with two plates of Japanese Haniwa masks, pre-sixth century, seem­ ingly expressionless with their black holes for eyes and small slits for mouths. No explanation is provided. In the Psychology, Malraux had introduced the notion that works co-exist outside of chronological time, ceasing to be 'works' to become, rather, 'moments' ( 1 956, p. 46). These can be transposed at will, 'meeting in an entirely different kind of unity' ( 1 9 5 5 , p. 1 8): ' BAUDELAIRE 'S vision of "night" [unites with] that of Michelangelo, but has not effaced it' ( 1 956, p. 65). In 1 97 8 , Godard gave a series of talks initially intended to be a practical workshop, assembling films on video using Malraux's method and with the same aim: to carry out comparative formal analysis and achieve a dialogue through metamorphosis. Instead, he had to articulate aloud what he wanted but was not yet technically able to do: 'to see something and then to see another close-up, but at the same time' (p. 1 0). In its place, over the course of more than a dozen public talks, he settled for a method closer to the screen­ ing practices of HENRI LANGLOIS at the Cinematheque frarn;:aise in Godard's formative years: showing single reels of different films one after another, but with a final obj ective clearly informed by Malraux. In a session whose theme was 'monsters', involving Tod Browning's Dracula ( 1 9 3 l ) (he had hoped to use Browning's Freaks [ 1 9 3 2 ] , known as Monstres in French), ROB ERTO RO S S ELLINI 's Germany, Year Zero ( 1 948) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds ( 1 963), he explained after the screenings: 'If I had seen Dracula all by itself, I could never have had that idea [of questioning who the true monsters in Dracula are] . But because I see it and . . . afterwards or just before [I] see Germany, Year Zero . . . . I think it worked pretty well from a cosmic point of

1 99

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view. There was a kind of cosmic connection between these films . . . . Berlin was Dracula's tomb' (p. 3 09). These films and this argument return in Histoire (s) du cinema ( 1 989-98). Finally working with video, Godard was able to overcome the limitations of 3 5 mm film, not to mention those of Malraux's books of photographs. Here images, juxtapositions and metamor­ phoses proliferate. Iconic images from art history metamorphose into frame grabs from classical Hollywood genre films, with added textual and voice-over commentary. Chapter 3 A of Histoire(s), 'La Monnaie de l'absolu' ( 1 998)-the title of the third volume of Malraux's Psycho logy-opens on an image of Goya's painting Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1 8 2 3) (in 1 950, Mal­ raux had published a book on Goya called Saturn). In this section Godard creates a dense collage, framed by bold titles ruminating on ANDRE B AZIN 's question WHAT IS CINEMA? . Fallowing a clip from Rossellini's Rome, Open City ( 1 945) and George Stevens' footage of Ravensbruck showing rows of dead in a Nazi camp after the war, Godard superimposes footage from two films: first, a shot of Hitch­ cock's low-flying birds against the sky with, as if in the same sky, a sole menacing bomber plane. There follows footage of the children in The Birds fleeing the overhead threat, the plane now mingling freely with the birds as if it were one of them. Chapter 4A of Histoire (s), 'Le Controle de l'univers' ( 1 998), re­ turns to The Birds, followed by Freaks intercut with more death-camp footage, this time from Andrzej Munk's Holocaust fiction Passenger ( 1 963), and colour pornography. This is an allusion to another theme from Godard's 1 978 talks, that of 'pornography as being a part of totalitarianism and totalitarianism as being a part of pornography' (p. 3 9 1 )-more interpenetration of forms. But without Godard's expla­ nations from his public talks, these sequences become rebuses that the viewer cannot reliably decipher, a drawback-or a welcome attribute-inherited from Malraux. Timothy Barnard Andre Malraux. Le Musee imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale, 2 004. Theodor Adorno. Aesthetic The01y < 1 970>, 1 999· Jean-Luc Godard . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>,

2 0 1 4Andre Malraux. The Voices of Silence < 1 95 1 >, 1 956. Jean-Pierre Zarader, La Pensee de I' art, 1 989-90.

T HOM AS M ANN Lotte in Weimar favourite of Jean-Luc Godard's, and as was often the case he return ed to hi m con­ siderably later in life. Lotte in Weimar, like such modernist masterpieces as Marcel Proust's IN S EARCH OF LOST TIME ( l 9 l 3 -2 7 ) , concerns the grand subj ects of twentieth-century literature: the rela­ tion between past and present and between literature and real life. Mann treats these themes more concisely than Proust, limiting him­ self to one volume and one story, that of a meeting between the aged Charlotte Kestner (nee Charlotte Buff) and the equally aged Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The great German poet was in love with Charlotte for many years, and he immortalised her as Lotte in his semi-autobiographical novel The Sorrows ofYoung Werther ( 1 774). Lotte in Weimar is thus a novel about a novel. Charlotte's visit to Weimar lets Mann assess the consequences of the passage of time and wonder which is more precious: life or art. Lotte in Weimar does not definitively answer these questions but does offer some clues. It points to time's destructive force, indicated by the recurrent motif of Charlotte's trembling head, but more strongly emphasises that not everything goes away: true beauty and charm shine through the layers of accumulated experience. Mann renders the old Charlotte in such a way as to show why men fell for her. She is honest, unpretentious, quick-witted and good at heart. Mann even mentions that she seems more attractive than her own daughter. Mann's Goethe is an artist first and a man second, one who pre­ fers to kiss a copy, or even a copy of a copy, than the real thing. Throughout his life, he deliberately sought impossible relationships to use in his work. His love for Charlotte models this approach. He fell in love with her because she was already engaged to and in love with another man whom she subsequently married. This fact ensured that Goethe's love was full of sorrow, and thus perfect material for a so-called romantic novel. A similar streak of fatalistic Romanticism of course permeates the films of Jean-Luc Godard, who also ap­ pears to have sought out impossible relationships to use in his work. Speaking about the doomed love depicted in Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965), he remarked: 'I wanted to tell the story of the last [R] omantic couple,

T

ROMAS MANN WAS A BOYHOOD

Lotte in Weimar. Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1 9 3 9 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

201

the last descendants of The New Heloise, Werther and Hermann and Dorothea' (p. 2 1 6)-three of the most significant literary works of the early Romantic period of the eighteenth century. By and large, Goethe in Lotte in Weimar comes across as a cold man, verging on inhumanity, fascinated by fossils and shadows, in­ different to the people around him and even prepared to sacrifice them for his artistic and personal needs. These impulses also pertain to Charlotte, who became a kind of common property, a national treasure everyone wants to meet. Charlotte experiences the power of her public persona with full force when she arrives in Weimar and is virtually besieged by its inhabitants and tourists. In contrast to Goethe, Mann gives in to the sexist cliche that women are on the side of nature while men on the side of culture, presenting Lotte, the mother of nine, as warm, genuine and life giving. Charlotte insists on her autonomy by claiming that she is not the Lotte of Goethe's novel, not only because she aged while Lotte remained young, but also because there are many differences between her and Goethe's literary creation, such as the different colour of her eyes. Lotte, she maintains, is a composite character, which Goethe created by merg­ ing the features of several women. Charlotte is the real centre of Mann's novel, as both its title and Goethe's delayed appearance in the book suggest. Mann ultimately 'redeems' Goethe, presenting him as a martyr who sacrificed his life for his art, so that through his art we can appreciate life more fully. Godard refers to Lotte in Weimar in Allegmagne 90 neufzero: Soli­ tudes, un itat et des variations ( 1 99 1 ). He was invited to shoot in Berlin as part of a larger (and ultimately unrealised) proj ect on the topic of solitude, one that included Wim Wenders, Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman. Charlotte appears in this film as one of the guides of the main character, Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), lead­ ing him through a newly united Berlin. Though her presence in the film is brief, the importance of Mann's book for Allemagne 90 neuf zero exceeds such quotations: the film too is about the connection between past and present and between art and life. Lemmy Caution, like Charlotte in Mann's rendering, is a character from and with a distinctive past. He appeared in Godard's work for the first time in his noir science fiction film Alphaville: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965), in which he travelled in his Ford Galaxy to spy on a distant planet. In Allemagne 90 neuf zero he is almost thirty years

202

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

older than at the time of Alphaville, and working as the last Western spy in East Germany, living in hiding behind an old-fashioned hair­ dressing salon. He has not changed much, however. In Alphaville, with his humanity, his interest in books, a face marked by wrinkl es and scars, and his noir, macho ways, he was already an anachronism. Like Charlotte's trembling head in Mann's book, Lemmy's wrinkles and his slow, tired walk testify to the fact that he has travelled very far, accumulating a wealth of experience. As in many of Godard's films of the 1 980s and 1 990s, most im­ portantly Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), art in Allemagne 90 neufzero is rendered crucial for the survival of individuals and nations, provid­ ing them with continuity and identity. Art guides us through life, as Charlotte guides the clueless or demented Lemmy through Berlin and Germany at the crucial juncture, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which Godard presents as moving towards a cultureless, consumerist pseudo-paradise, epitomised by the neon lights of West Berlin. Art and culture, in the form of books sold cheaply at shabby stalls and monuments of famous people living in Berlin, are rendered as nobler than real life after the fall of the Wall, a period which seems practi­ cally devoid of any values. Godard's Charlotte, like Goethe's Lotte, is a composite charac­ ter. The same actress, Claudia Michelsen, is called both Charlotte and Dora-the name of one of the most famous subjects of Sigmund Freud's studies. In this way, Godard suggests that Charlotte belongs to a long lineage of figures who made German culture famous all over the world. His film is about the weight of this culture, which should not be forgotten in the pursuit of more earthly pleasures and values. Godard himself, who has attracted nicknames such as the Pope of the Nouvelle Vague or Monsieur Cinema, can be compared to Goethe, who always lived for his art rather that merely treating his art as a means to earn his living. Moreover, Godard, like Goethe, has often used women to express his ideas and as guides to specific places and cultures. Ewa Mazierska Thomas Mann. Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, I 990. ---

---

. Lotte in Weimar: Roman, I 990.

. Lotte a Weimar, 1 989.

Jean-Luc Godard. Let's Talk about Pie1Tot < 1 96p, 1 986P.

M AO Z EDONG Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse- Tung piles in Jean-Luc Godard's borrowed bourgeois Paris apartment in his 1 967 film La Chinoise, Mao Zedong's vinyl-sleeved 'Little Red Book', Mao Zhu Xi Yu Lu, was more than a colourful prop. The world's second most-read book was the sign of an incipient radical shift in French thought, a shift many saw as the catalyst for the May 1 968 student and worker revolt. Measuring just 3 1/2 by 5 inches-small enough to fit in an army jacket pocket-Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung was initially pub­ lished as an ideological primer for members of the Chinese military in 1 964 before being distributed in revised and expanded form to the broader Chinese public in 1 965, the year before China's decade-long Cultural Revolution got underway, when it began to be translated into numerous languages and promoted abroad. Several billion cop­ ies have been printed worldwide, fewer only than the Bible. Made up of fragments of Mao Zedong's writings and speeches, a publication genre with a prestigious history in Chinese letters, Quotations is arranged into thematic sections providing doctrinal guidance to the ordinary Chinese reader. The first French edition, appearing in December 1 966, was followed up by an edition in a slightly larger format from the publisher Seuil in early 1 967. In fact Mao's writings had begun to be available in French since the mid1 95os, shortly after the 1 949 Chinese Revolution, in the first volume of a collection of entire texts published in France and translated from Russian. Godard likely knew these writings before making La Chi­ noise through his new political theory guide and future filmmaking partner Jean-Pierre Gorin, and would soon write several articles for the Maoist press himself. Gorin was a Maoist activist and former stu­ dent of the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, who had been writing about Mao since the 1 950s; in the early 1 960s he was at the forefront of the French Left's disillusioned turn from Moscow in search of a new brand of Marxism. What it found was Maoism, whose adherents or fellow travellers included ALAIN BADIOU, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, J EAN-PAUL SARTRE and Philippe Sollers. Mao brought to Marxism a new internationalism and emphasis on the developing world; the 1 959 Cuban Revolution, documented

S

TACKED IN BLOOD-RED

Mao Zhu Xi Yu Lu. Beijing: People's Liberation Army Press, 1 964.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard by Chris Marker and Agnes Varda, had in addition arrived as Mao was being discovered in France. This internationalism would be a prominent quality of Godard's films in the next half-decade, begin­ ning with the role of the Senegalese student Omar Diop under his own name in La Chinoise, giving a lecture to the film's other young activists which Godard cribbed from Althusser, Mao and the politi­ cal magazine Garde rouge. In the following decade, he would work, or attempt to, in Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Palestine and Mozambique, and come under the influence of GLAUBER ROCHA. Maoism also granted new space in Marxist theory to culture, broadly defined. The French Maoists would devour the Cultural Revolution, ostensibly oblivious to its murderous excesses until the death of Mao in 1 976, but this official version was belied as early as La Chinoise, when Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), prompted by God­ ard off-screen, acknowledges its abuses in her train-ride discussion with the activist Francis Jeanson. Godard's own very Maoist verdict on cinema after his exposure to Mao was rendered in an interview conducted shortly after the release of La Chinoise: cinema was 'capi­ talism's agit-prop. The ultimate virus. And the proof that it is capital­ ism's best propaganda is that no one realises it' ( 1 998M, p. 3 1 8). Althusser had written as early as 1953 o n Mao's text 'On Con­ tradiction' (a topic of inherent interest to Godard), a major theoreti­ cal statement barely represented in Quotations but which set out the principle that the 'development of a thing' did not have an external cause, as Soviet Marxism would hold, but an internal one, as a result of its own contradictions (2007, p. 69). In Mao's description, every thing is also in contradiction with what is adjacent to it (pp. 78-79); we might wonder whether this notion informed Godard's decision to make La Chinoise 'purely a montage film' ( 1 998M, p. 3 r n)-the first since Une Femme mariee: Fragments d'un film tourne en 1964 ( 1 964)­ its elements juxtaposed without a prior plan to expose their contra­ dictions rather than being a 'continuity' film made in the filming. In addition to the unremitting Mao quotations in La Chinoise, some read out Little Red Book in hand, Godard, true to the purpose of Quotations, included a Mao quotation on each of the daily one­ page call sheets of the film shoot as guidance for his crew and actors. He would quote Mao infrequently, but accurately, in interviews and talks into the mid- 1 98os. None of this, however, gives a true sense of the profound effect of Mao's thought on Godard. In a passage in

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MAO ZEDONG

Quotations dating from 1 947, at the height of the insurgency which would lead to victory two years later, Mao set out his movement's military strategy: ' ( 1 ) Attack dispersed, isolated enemy forces first; attack concentrated, strong enemy forces later; (2) Take small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first; take big cites later' (p. 95). Modern guerrilla warfare was born. Mao acknowledges that this strategy was based on the ancient board game wei-ch'i, more com­ monly known in the West by its Japanese name go and mis-translated as chess in English editions of Mao's writings. As Scott Boorman has shown, wei-ch'i strategy was the 'key' to the victory of 'Communist "peasants " ' over the professional Nationalist army (p. 1 5 3). It is thus not just that the rhetoric of Godard's films shows the influence of Maoism or that they also took an internationalist turn. For five years he was a full-fledged Maoist, largely renouncing his own name and quitting Paris and commercial filmmaking to wage war on the latter from the cinematic, economic and geographical periphery as a deliberate Maoist combat strategy. This traj ectory is announced by the train ride in La Chinoise; while Wiazemsky (in truth Godard) and Jeanson discuss violent rebellion, facing each other with the train window between them, we see the outside world file past, almost like a film proj ected onto a screen. The train takes them from Paris to the countryside, the locus of Godard's new militancy. But film is more complex ideologically than military combat; more than militancy would be required. New relations with actors and audiences were necessary, a constant concern of Godard's at the time. Thus in a film co-directed with Gorin under their own names, Tout va bien ( 1 9 7 2 ) , the two would pound the star personae out of Jane Fonda and Yves Montand in a manner worthy of the Cultural Revolu­ tion. Montand tells the audience that the film is modelled on BERTOLT BRECHT, as it is, but its paroxysms derive from Mao. Godard's Maoist phase would close with the pair's next film, Letter to Jane: An Investi­ gation about a Still ( 1 972), whose anti-star commentary quotes Mao and was published in the then-Maoist literary journal Tel Quel. Timothy Barnard Mao Zedong. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 1 966. ---

. Citations du President Mao Tse-Toung, l 966.

Scott A. Boorman. The Protracted Game, l 969. Jean-Luc Godard. Lutter sur deux fronts ( 1 967), 1 998M. Mao Zedong. On Contradiction < 1 9 3 7>, 2007.

HU G U ET TE M ARQUAND F ERREU X Musee du Cin ema Henri Langlois of the film Deux fois cinquante ans de cinema franfais ( 1 995), co-directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville, Godard enters the dining room of the local hotel at his home of Rolle, Switzerland, to breakfast with the visiting actor Michel Piccoli, head of the association formed to mark the centenary of cinema in France that year. Godard is carrying Huguette Marquand Ferreux's enormous three-volume Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois under his arm in its slipcase, a gift for Piccoli. The book sits at Godard's elbow throughout their long breakfast discussion of French film history. HENRI LANGLOI S , co-founder of the Cinematheque frarn;aise in the 1 93 0s, was just as devoted to collecting and exhibiting cinema artefacts as he was to archiving and projecting films, and a museum was part of the Cinematheque from as early as 1 948, when Godard began to frequent it. At the time, in order to circumvent regulations around the operation of movie theatres, Langlois had patrons pay to enter the museum and walk through it on the way to the screen­ ing room. In the following decades he often organised exhibitions of his collections, in France and abroad, while dreaming of a full­ fledged museum. A major exhibition and film program at the Musee d'art moderne in Paris in 1 9 5 5 was documented with a book which records all of Langlois' idiosyncratic film programs but makes no di­ rect mention of the exhibition, whose artefacts were relegated to il­ lustrating the publication's texts. There, Langlois states his case: not only is study of films themselves essential to understanding film his­ tory, but also 'everything connected with [them] : scenarios, shooting scripts, scale-model sets, photographs, advertisements' (n.p.). Finally, in 1 9 7 2 , and exhausting the Cinematheque's financial resources in the process, Langlois opened his museum; it closed in 1 997, twenty years after his death, due to a fire in an adjacent space, whereupon it was stored intact after a court ruled that it was the creative endeavour of one man. Indeed the title of Marquand Ferreux's book is the full name of Langlois' museum. Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois, published in

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N THE OPENING SCENE

Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois, 3 vols. Paris: Maeght/ Cinematheque frarn;aise, l 99 l .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard matching French and English editions under the same French title with a preface consisting of an interview between Godard and Swiss Film Archive director Freddy Buache, is one of several books which document Langlois' museum in one way or another. Although it is the most lavish and extensive, and despite the inclusion of floor plans of the lost galleries, a complete inventory of the artefacts on display and several photographs of the galleries, it inevitably fails (and no other volume attempts) to convey the genesis and spirit of the exhibits, resorting most often to the use of standard catalogue photographic plates of isolated objects. The peculiar nature of the museum makes it impossible to capture its unique spirit in the pages of a book. Unsurprisingly, Langlois approached his museum as idiosyncratically as he treated his film programs. The equipment, costumes, sets, posters and props he had assiduously acquired were arranged, without identifying labels and most often not under glass, in a spatial montage whose significance he alone knew. His museum was designed 'on instinct' and 'improvisationally, in disorder', Lan­ glois remarked to a visitor ( 1 995, p. 2 9 2). With the artefacts directly occupying the space, free of mediation, viewers were intended to experience them in a manner similar to the exhibition's conception. Godard was sold on the idea: ' [Langlois] knew very well what he was doing with his projections "in disorder" and his bizarre museum. It was full of nuances and subtexts, unexpected comparisons that set in motion true critical thinking', he remarks in the preface to Marquand Ferreux's book (vol. l , p. 5). F RAN, 2 0 1 + . JLG/JLG e t autres textes, 202 2 . ---

HORAC E M c C OY Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Serie noire novel-Richard Stark's The Jugger­ Made in U. S.A . ( 1 966) contains another as part of its mise en scene: Horace McCoy's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. In the third shot of the opening sequence, Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) appears in a prone position with her eyes closed and the book open on her chest, suggesting that she has fallen asleep while reading. Provid­ ing a contrast with her brightly coloured knit dress, the distinctive cover graphics-yellow lettering on a black background-identify the book as a Serie noire novel and thus align the ensuing story with crime thrillers. The cover title is clearly legible. The gritty American idiom of the original did not translate well, so its French translators gave it a more lyrical title: Adieu la vie, adieu /'amour. Associated with Anna Karina, this title also has a personal resonance for Jean-Luc Godard. When he and Karina made the film, they had already sepa­ rated. Both knew Made in U.S.A. would be their last film together. At the time the film was made, McCoy had a greater reputa­ tion in France than in his native United States. His first two books, They Shoot Horses, Don 't They? ( 1 9 3 6) and No Pockets in a Shroud ( 1 9 3 7), both translated into French in 1 946, touched a nerve among post-war French intellectuals. The worldview of their world-weary protagonists anticipated the writings of the French existentialists. Simone de Beauvoir credited McCoy and other hard-boiled crime writers for giving existentialist philosophers the vocabulary for nov­ elising their ideas ( 1 98 1 , p. 2 05). French readers grouped McCoy, who is sometimes considered the first American existentialist, with Ernest Hemingway and WILLIAM FAULKNER as the top three Ameri­ can writers of their time. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye tells the story of Ralph Cotter, a former honours student turned psychotic killer. As the novel opens, Cotter murders a fellow inmate as they break out of a prison farm. Assisted by Holiday, the murdered inmate's sex-crazed sister, Cotter begins a crime spree upon his escape. He kills another man during a super­ market heist but subsequently encounters a corrupt police inspector. Cotter records an incriminating interview, which gives him lever­ age over the inspector, allowing Cotter to commit police-sanctioned

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ASED ON ONE

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: A Novel. New York: Random House , 1 948 .

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robbery and murder. His search for a crooked lawyer incidentally brings him into contact with Margaret Dobson, the daughter of a multi-millionaire. Godard may have read Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye before he made A bout de souffie ( 1 960) : the character of Margaret Dobson, the well-to-do young woman attracted to a charming killer, closely resembles Patricia Franchini Gean Seberg). Margaret's physical appearance awakens Ralph's suppressed memories of his dead grandmother. After stealing the protection money collected by four local gangsters and killing all of them, Cot­ ter plans to celebrate with Holiday, but instead Margaret's father invites him to his home and offers Ralph a million dollars to stay with Margaret. The offer is tempting, but Cotter knows Margaret will always remind him of his grandmother. As a young boy, he used to put his head under his grandmother's skirt, a gesture Jesus would replicate with Marie in Je vous salue, Marie ( 1 985). Acting out his boyhood desires, Cotter had tried to molest his grandmother, whom he killed when she rebuffed him. Cotter leaves Margaret and returns to Holiday, who, having learned that he killed her brother, shoots Cotter dead. Like many hard-boiled crime novels, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is narrated in the first person by its protagonist. This narrative point of view puts the reader into Ralph's mind-a disturbing place to be. As an intellectual, Cotter understands or, at least, presumes to under­ stand his crimes, though he cannot stop himself from committing them. He boasts that he has become a criminal of his free will, though he subconsciously suppressed all memory of his grandmother until Margaret revives them. Further complicating the narration, Ralph is a dead narrator: he tells his story in the first person after he has been shot and killed. For Made in U S.A . , Godard took advantage of McCoy's first­ person narrative, adding further complexity. With the copy of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye on her chest, Paula opens her eyes and begins the narration, which seems to explain her relationship with the lover she has lost. Though told in the first person, the text does not come from McCoy. Spoken in a throaty whisper by Karina, it is, rather, a fragmented and modified excerpt from SAMUEL BECKETT 'S short story 'Enough' ( 1 966): 'Happiness, for instance . . . . Whenever he desired something so did I. He only had to say what thing. When he didn't desire anything neither did I. In this way I didn't live without

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Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

desires. Or fame, for him . . . . When he was silent he must have been like me . . . . I drew satisfaction from it' (p. 365). Beckett's words gloss Paula's feelings for her lover, Richard Politzer, whose murder she is now investigating. Associated with McCoy's crime novel, Beckett's text anticipates the contrast between high and low culture that runs throughout Made in U. S.A. and, indeed, Godard's oeuvre. Juxtaposing these two texts, Godard essentially challenges their hierarchy. Elliptical, frag­ mented, depicting life at odd angles, 'Enough' resembles much of Beckett's work. Taken together, the sound of Beckett's text and the image of McCoy's book in Made in U. S.A. blend the two, creating a verbal collage so seamless that they can scarcely be separated from one another. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye parallels another narrative that underlies Made in US.A. , the story of the Ben Barka affair. A year earlier, Mehdi Ben Barka, the exiled leader of the left-wing Moroccan opposition, had mysteriously disappeared. French officials denied having any­ thing to do with his disappearance, but as details of the story slowly emerged, it became apparent that the French secret police had con­ spired with Georges Figon, a convicted bank robber and would-be film producer, to deliver Ben Barka to Moroccan secret agents. In Made in US.A. Politzer represents Figon. Read in light of the Ben Barka affair, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye seems strangely familiar. The story of Georges Figon's complicity with the French secret police recapitulates the story of Ralph Cotter's complicity with the corrupt police inspector. All too often, Godard implies, the dark and danger­ ous landscape of the Serie noire novel could find its equivalent in the political intrigue of the modern world. Kevin ]. Hayes Horace McCoy. Kiss Toman-ow Goodbye, 1 996. ---

. Adieu la vie, adieu !'amour: Demain, ilfera nuit, 1 99 5 .

Samuel Beckett. Enough < 1 966>, 2 006c. Inge Kutt. Horace (Stanley) McCoy, 1 98 1 .

HERM AN M ELVI LLE The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade of Le Grand Escroc ( 1 964) presents a close-up of Patricia Leacock (Jean Seberg) reading a book entitled Le Grand Escroc. The title means 'The Great Swin­ dler', but the book is actually Henri Thomas' French translation of The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, the last novel Herman Melville published in his lifetime. Jean-Luc Godard had agreed to direct this short in late 1 962 as part of the omnibus film The World's Most Beau­ tiful Swindlers ( 1 964). He filmed it in Marrakesh in January 1 96 3 , but Le Grand Escroc was omitted from the omnibus film for its Paris premiere in August 1 964. This omission is disappointing: Godard's use of The Confidence-Man suits the contemporary enthusiasm for Melville's novel. By the time he wrote The Confidence-Man, Melville, in Jean­ jacques Mayoux's words, was 'finished, consumed, like Rimbaud after A S EASON IN HELL ' (p. I I l ) . Largely forgotten at his death in 1 89 1 , Melville was not seen as a great writer until the Oxford World's Classics edition of Moby-Dick ( 1 8 5 1 ) appeared in 1 920. This edition sparked the Melville revival, and Moby-Dick was translated across Europe in the coming years. Not until Gallimard published its translation of Moby-Dick in 1 94 1 did French enthusiasm truly erupt. Reviewing it for the Journal des debats, MAURI CE B LANCHOT called Moby-Dick 'the written equivalent of the universe' (p. 3). Inspired by the author of Moby-Dick, Jean-Pierre Grumbach, a member of the French Resistance, used 'Jean-Pierre Melville' as his nom de guerre. As the present author has observed, 'the Frenchman liked his nom de guerre so well he kept it apres la guerre, when Jean-Pierre Melville emerged as a leading filmmaker' (p. 1 4). Moby-Dick became so firmly entrenched as a literary classic that readers began seeking alternate Melville works to celebrate. In 1 949 Grove Press published a new edition of The Confidence-Man. Grove would become known for bringing to American readers leading European authors- SAMUEL BECKETT, JEAN GENET, Alain Robbe­ Grillet-but the press's first imprint was The Confidence-Man. The year after the Grove edition the publisher Editions de Minuit released

T

HE OPENING SHOT

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. New York: Dix, Edwa rd s , 1 857.

2I

6

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

the French translation, Le Grand Escroc. The work's modernity made it ideal for readers seeking a Herman Melville unencumbered by the stodginess imposed by the term 'literary classic' . Melville's confidence man is the devil in disguise. In the book's opening chapter he appears as a deaf mute with a Christ-like de­ meanour and the look of a lamb. Boarding a Mississippi steamboat with other passengers, he carries a slate onto which he chalks: 'Char­ ity thinketh no evil' . As Patricia continues reading The Confidence­ Man in the opening scene of Le Grand Escroc, the camera cuts to a close-up of this phrase from the book. The lamblike man leaves the word 'Charity' on the slate, erases the rest of the sentence and then writes a series of new sentences, all of which derive from 1 Corin­ thians 1 3 , proving that even the devil can quote scripture. Cutting between shots of Patricia reading and close-ups of pages from its first chapter, Godard shows three more of the lamblike man's writ­ ten messages: 'Charity endureth all things'; 'Charity believeth all things'; and 'Charity never faileth'. These expressions of charity are pertinent to the plot of Le Grand Escroc, which concerns a counterfeiter (Charles Denner) who prints bogus banknotes and then gives them away to the poor and needy. Once Patricia begins interviewing him, he repeats one of the lamblike man's written slogans: 'Charity endureth all things'. As the interview continues, he repeats another: 'Charity thinketh no evil'. Patricia seems to be reliving in real life what she has just read in Melville's novel. The influence of The Confidence-Man on Godard extends beyond Le Grand Escroc. The lamblike man's portable slate became a model for Godard's subsequent use of the written word as a visual element in his films. Much as the slate's frame contains the messages that the lamblike man displays to steamboat passengers, the motion picture frame would contain Godard's written messages, framing them to enhance their display. Naming Seberg's character Patricia Leacock, Godard deliber­ ately reminded viewers of her role as Patricia Franchini in A bout de souffie ( 1 960) . She is practically the same character. A cub reporter in that film, she interviews Parvulesco, a great writer played by Jean­ Pierre Melville. Four years on, she has taken a position as a reporter with a San Francisco television station. Her last name comes from Richard Leacock, the creator of cinema verite. Less than a year after filming Le Grand Escroc, Godard would write a scathing critique

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of Leacock's cinematic approach for Cahiers du Cinema. His article provides a good gloss on the film. With her hand-held camera, Pa­ tricia Leacock films a series of close-ups; Godard critiques Richard Leacock's 'childish mania for fi l ming things in close-up which cry out for long shot' . Richard Leacock's attempt to make the camera invisible ignored its power and its purpose. Godard explains: 'Thus deprived of consciousness, Leacock's camera loses, despite its hon­ esty, the two fundamental qualities of a camera: intelligence and sensitivity' (p. 2 03). The Confidence-Man effectively glosses Leacock's technique. A filmmaker who practices cinema verite is a kind of confidence man. What he or she passes off as truth is not really true at all because it attempts to make the camera invisible, which it can never be. Watch­ ing Le Grand Escroc from the perspective of Godard's filmmaking career, it is unsurprising that he found The Confidence-Man appeal­ ing. Few themes are more prevalent in Godard's work than the clash between truth and falsehood. Presenting a character who changes identities from one chapter to the next, Melville demonstrates how easily image can mask reality. Kevin ]. Hayes Herman Melville. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, 2006. ---

. Le Grand Escroc, 2 006.

Maurice Blanchot. Le Secret de Melville, l 94 r . Jean-Luc Godard. Dictionary o f American Filmmakers ( 1 963-64), 1 9861\.'. Kevin ]. Hayes. Herman Melville, 2 0 1 7 . Jean-Jacques Mayoux. Melville < 1 958>, 1 960.

M I C HEL DE M ONTAI G NE Essays I 5 70

announced that he would re­ treat from the world to read the Ancients and spend his remain­ ing years in freedom, tranquillity and leisure. He had a book­ lined tower built on his estate, emerging from it ten years later with his masterpiece, the Essais, which he would keep expanding until his death in r 5 9 2 . This immensely influential work has provided the name and model for the personal essay and is rightly considered the first non-fiction masterpiece of French prose. Montaigne's great in­ novation was to join a self-portrait with a wide-ranging, yet sceptical examination of his culture. He rifled through the commonplace top­ ics of philosophy in an intensively reflexive way, examining his own attempts at grasping the truth. The result of this inward turn was that thinking, belief formation and the reciprocal influence of writ­ ing and self appeared openly in all their messiness and unpredict­ ability, transience, instability, fallibility and endless digressiveness. The loose associations and sudden leaps from topic to topic account for the 'personal' in the personal essay because they follow the writer's impulses and accidental discoveries, not a pre-existing template or externally imposed expectations. Montaigne presents investigation as unending: we can never be sure to have found the truth and will always find opposing propositions to those we thought certain. His text is aggregative without coming to a final conclu­ sion or seeking to correct others. Montaigne sought to create active readers who could fill the logical gaps of his essays themselves. For Montaigne, all meaning emanated from the labyrinthine self and was therefore malleable and faulty, with all apparent hierarchies revers­ ible and connected. Montaigne's process of learning led him to doubt the putative certainties of general schemes and grand ideologies. Jean-Luc Godard quotes from Montaigne's Essays in the open­ ing credits of Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962)-'we must lend ourselves to others, and give ourselves only to ourselves' (p. 767). This aphorism signposts Nana's struggle to retain her auton­ omy. In 1 962 Godard had probably not read the Essays themselves, later on saying he was saving them for his old age. Montaigne is less important to Godard as a specific source than as a general inspiration;

I

N MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Essais. Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1 5 80.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

2 19

he told Jean-Pierre Gorin that he dreamt of being Montaigne and making essay films ( 1 98 3 , p. 5 1 ): a dream he would surely fulfil. As early as 1 962 Godard compared his films to essays: 'I think of myself as an essayist, producing essays in novel form or novels in essay form: only instead of writing, I film them' ( 1 986K, p. 1 7 1 ). Hav­ ing spent much of the 1 950s writing film criticism, he incorporated what he learned as a critic into his films, giving them a hybrid qual­ ity, interspersing reflective moments or documentary inserts with narrative and halting the action to present facts or pose a question. The notion of the essay here is relatively static: it is the opposite of the fiction that co-exists with it in his films. Godard more closely approaches the essayistic when he says that his films were not just hybrids of criticism, essay and novel, but attempts, experiments, fragments and personal research (an essai in French, the origin of the English word 'assay', also means an attempt, trial, test or experiment). He expressed this attitude more fully as he reflected upon Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle ( 1 967) in a text entitled, appropriately enough, 'One Should Put Everything into a Film' : 'Basically, what I am doing is making the spectator share the arbitrary nature of my choices, and the quest for general rules which might justify a particular choice', he explained. 'I am con­ stantly asking questions. I watch myself filming, and you hear me thinking aloud. In other words it isn't a film, it's an attempt at film and is presented as such. It really forms part of my personal [artistic quest] ' ( 1 986R, p. 2 3 9). The open-ended, dynamic shape of the film is an expression of a reflexive thinking process in the present moment intended to arouse the same kind of questioning in the viewer. What Montaigne had called the endless hunt for knowledge is integrated into the dynamics of the self. Thinking is associated with doubt even if a film is full of assertions because we cannot locate the filmmaker's own final opinion within it. Godard's remarks about Montaigne mostly occur after h e em­ braced Althusserian MAO I S M in the late 1 960s to present political and social issues in a 'non-bourgeois' film form. The effacement of his name under that of collective authorship would be one of its ges­ tures. If Godard was suddenly attracted to Montaigne, his impulse marks the dawning realisation that he could not make even these films without some version of the suppressed self reappearing. The Montaignian essay exemplifies a subjectivity that is neither Romantic

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nor autobiographical. It may be bourgeois, but it combines radical questioning and reflection from a position of marginal autonomy within an open frame of discourse in which quotations, self presenta­ tions and genres are insistently juxtaposed . It foregrounds the self as an ongoing thinking process as we are writing/reading and making/ watching a film. Montaigne said his book was consubstantial with himself. Godard's life too is made of film and filming, and recipro­ cally his films are self-portraits in the Montaignian sense. Godard explained: 'I've never hidden the fact that I put myself in-it's never bothered me to place myself in each character in turn, but some­ times this means that you see that they aren't very well done, they're illogical or not logical. But this comes from the fact that I place an idea that is purely my own in one of the characters' (2 0 1 4, p. 2 l 3). Godard's films show him thinking film, filming his thought. In many of the works he has filmed since the 1 960s Godard puts him­ self in front of the camera or ruminates in voice-over, both as char­ acter and lecturer. He stages himself making a film, writing, editing, playing with ideas, most obviously in his own 'tower' in Rolle, sur­ rounded by film materials and books, overlooking his native land­ scape. Throughout his work Godard identifies more closely with Montaigne than with Rousseau. In JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994), for example, the portrayal of the natural landscape suggests a Rousseau-like wandering, but it is Godard's self-observation in the process of making the film than links him with Montaigne. It was no accident, then, that when critics and curators in the l 99os and 2 000s began assessing decades of Godard's artistic work, they found it increasingly useful to see Godard's films as essay films and Godard as an 'essayist', with the essay film being broadly de­ fined as a non-fictional topic treated in a subj ective manner. Much as Montaigne defined and exemplified the literary essay, Godard has been instrumental in defining and exemplifying the essay film. Mark Cohen Michel de Montaigne. The Complete Essays ofMontaigrze, 2 0 1 4.

--- . Les Essais en franfais moderne, 202 l . Jean-Luc Godard. Interview < 1 962>, l 986K. . One Should Put Everything into a Film < 1 967>, 1 986R. . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Julia Lesage. Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1 9 8 3 . ---

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ALBERT O M ORAVI A Contempt EAN-LUC GODARD's poor opinion of his talents notwithstand­ ing, Alberto Moravia was a significant figure in Italian letters throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century. A writer of se­ rious literature and journalism that addressed contemporary social issues, he was a friend and intellectual sparring partner of PIER PAOLO PAS OLINI . Le Mepris, Godard's 1 96 3 adaptation of fl disprezzo, was, unusally for him, a commissioned, big-budget, star-laden film. First translated as A Ghost at Noon, Contempt is a first-person rumination by Roman playwright turned scriptwriter Riccardo Molteni on the breakdown of his marriage with the beautiful work­ ing-class Emilia while working on a film adaptation of The Odyssey, directed by the German filmmaker Rheingold under the Italian pro­ ducer Battista. In fact Moravia re-imagined a series of events that had taken place shortly before Contempt's publication. A film, Ulysses, an Italian-American adaptation of Homer's epic initially to have been directed by G.W Pabst, was in fact released the same year as the novel. The project, as pitched to producer Carlo Ponti by Pabst, is described by Rheingold in the novel as a 'modern, psychologi­ cal' study of Homer's epic, in which the reason for Ulysses' delayed return to Penelope is his realisation that he 'is awaited at home by a woman who no longer loves him' (p. 1 87), mirroring Molteni's own marital breakdown. Disagreements about the correct approach to the myth, however, saw Ponti remove Pabst from his own project (the novel does not advance this far in the story) and replace him with the Italian director Mario Camerini, who provided the more spectacular product Ponti sought. Commentators on Le Mepris have focused on questions around adapting and quoting literary texts (and films). Jacques Aumont, for example, argues that the film quotes not only film history, notably in its allusions to ROBERTO RO S SELLINI 's Journey to Italy ( 1 9 54), but also the film industry, which becomes Le Mepris' other central theme. For Aumont, the film's actors Jack Palance (playing Prokos ch as Battista), Giorgia Moll (playing Francesca, a character invented by Godard) and Fritz Lang (playing himself in Rheingold's role), each represent­ ing a different moment of film history, become 'living quotations' of

J

fl disprezzo. Milan: Bompiani, 1 9 54.

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Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

that history (p. 1 76). The use of quotation in Le Mepris extends to the film's epigraph; Godard took this epigraph, which he shortens, from a 1 959 article by the then little-known film critic MICHEL M OURLET, erroneously attributing it to ANDRE BAZIN: 'cinema is a way of look­ ing which takes the place of our own to give us a world reconciled with our desires' (2008, p. 5 1 ) . Few have remarked, however, that Godard switched the stance of the participants in this story. In the book, Molteni vociferously rejects Rheingold's psychoanalytical approach as a desecration of Homer and the real world he depicts, but in the film Lang takes no such approach. 'The beauty of the Odyssey', Molteni tells Rheingold, quoting one of Rossellini's key maxims five years before the latter uttered it, 'consists precisely in this belief in reality as it is and as it presents itself objectively' (p. 1 45). And while in the film Lang quotes the 'Ulysses canto' of Dante's Divine Comedy ( 1 3 20) to Prokosch (with 'Molteni' [Michel Piccoli playing Paul ]aval] finishing the quo­ tation, in altered and abridged form), in the novel it is Molteni who confronts Rheingold with the same passage (pp. 2 r n- 1 1 ) . On the question of Le Mepris' intertexts, its lineage proves instructive. Curiously, Ponti acquired the rights to Moravia's novel, an account of the genesis of Ulysses, and then co-produced Le Mepris. Here was Ponti producing a film based on a novel describing his involvement in another film. After seeing Godard's Les Carabiniers ( 1 96 3 ), he tried to replace Godard-just as he had replaced Pabst­ with FRAN, 1 9860. . Des Traces du cinema, 1 999· . Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 + ---

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OVI D Metamorphoses a procession of lovers taken by the emperor Augustus' daughter Julia, probably a dabbler in anti-imperial politics, and certainly the most celebrated sa­ tirical poet of his age and oft-cited source of classical mythology ever since, Publius Ovidius Naso spent his last years on a Danubian island shared with illiterate herdsmen and an embattled garrison. If the early collection of elegiac couplets Amores ( 1 6 B C) initiated his perennial parody of the epic poet Virgil, imperial Rome's foremost celebrant, it was his more scathing imitations-the Ars Amatoria (2 AD ), a seduction manual contradicting Augustus' new laws enforc­ ing marital fidelity, and the hexametric pseudo-epic Metamorphoseon libri, in which scheming, randy divinities lampoon Augustan claims to divine descent and hereditary rule-that provoked his rustication. Correspondingly, Jean-Luc Godard's treatment of Hollywood as a malevolent commercial empire, his penchant for formal experi­ mentation and intertextual borrowing and his preoccupation with the transgressive potentialities of erotic encounter offer a cinematic parallel to the uniqueness of Ovid's literary oeuvre. By l 980 Richard Roud, the first writer to devote a monograph in English to Godard, already discerned what might be the moment of Ovidian metamor­ phosis from one auteur aesthetic into another as Godard's stylistic, thematic and political coordinates underwent a transformation (p. 436). Having carried the idea of a decoupage-orientated cinema to its limits in Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962) and Les Carabi­ niers ( 1 963), Godard set about dissecting traditional narrative forms into layer-by-layer revelations of their component mechanisms. Richard Suchenski discerns a covert Ovidian influence in works as varied as Alphaville: une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965), Nouvelle Vague ( 1 990) and Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), the result of influences as varied as Carl Theodor Dreyer and J EAN C OCTEAU (pp. 1 65-66). Godard's voice-over commentary in the explicitly Ovidian Helas pour moi ( 1 993), however, is itself a meta-discourse, an annota­ tive supplement to his screen essays. In Book VI of Metamorphoses, Ovid explains Hercules' conception as the result of one ofJove's infi­ delities. Drawing from Ovid's principal source, Plautus' tragicomedy

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OSSIBLY ONE AMONG

Metamorphoseon libri. AD 7-8.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Amphitruo, Godard revels in ur-Ovidian allusion, importing a mali­ cious Mercury, incorporating an Edward G. Robinson-style film noir detective investigating a supposed crime, and adding numerous self­ references that underline its uneasy amalgamations of tragedy and comedy. The film also draws on Old and New Testament instances of divine conception in modernising the tale ofJove's impersonation of the absent soldier Amphytrion in order to impregnate Alcmene, his wife. Recast as a contemporary crime drama, it inquires into the events that transpire when Simon, a hotelier, reluctantly parts from his loving but resentful wife, Rachel, who gradually recognises that the husband who unexpectedly returns and kindles dormant pas­ sions is an imposter. Helas pour moi affords Godard yet another opportunity to ex­ plore shades of human sexuality, particularly the penumbra! shadows that intervene between consent and constraint. Gerard Depardieu, whose character's name Simon Donnadieu is a multi-layered pun, solemnly reprises his celebrated role as Martin Guerre, the epony­ mous imposter-husband of a 1 98 2 film. Godard narrates his story in the aftermath of the encounter, with the Ovidian mythological elements related in flashbacks. In contrast to the contradictory ac­ counts of a woman's forcible violation in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon ( 1 950), Rachel's uncertainty about the nature of the deception itself parallels Eve's, and she eventually prefers off-screen reticence. Announcing the film to consist of 'Books' (as in Metamorphoses), Godard immerses his spectator-auditors in two mythic strata from the outset, with a voice-over questioning the efficacy of divine interven­ tion, an essential component of the works of Homer and Aeschylus, through Judeo-Christian ambivalence about the nature of God's re­ lation to man and Ovidian scepticism about ritual forms. The same narrative voice, commenting on the arrival of the detective Abraham Klimt, appears to be 'interrupted' by insert shots set on a lakefront with the actors forming painterly tableaux even as they converse, their diegetic dialogue creating a counterpoint with the sonorities of myth. The melange of Homer, ALBERTO M O RAVIA and remembered films in Le Mepris notwithstanding, Klimt's neo-Ovidian failure is Godard's clearest expression of the unresolved tension between the visceral realism of the classical epic and the psychological depth of the Old Testament, a tension that as Jonathan Rosenbaum reminds us Erich Auerbach characterises as the overarching theme of Western

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representation (p. 1 86), although it is through Ovid and not Homer that Godard achieves the 'aching distance between the two styles'. In Helas pour moi, the compartmentalisation of ongoing narrative and descriptive mythology relies explicitly on Ovid's strategy of alter­ nation. Even so, it is Passion (1 982), the film that epitomises Godard's Ovidian phase, which remains the more admired and subtly allusive. In one of its narrative strands, a film director attempts to recreate masterpieces of painting reproduced on a variety of media by using actors and all the resources of cinema: two- and three-dimensional perspectives keep alternating as actions flow into multi-textual col­ lages (at one point incorporating three of Goya's paintings) or jostle into the required tableaux (as when triumphant Crusaders of an epic Delacroix canvas actually pursue the actresses who are to play their ravished Byzantine supplicants). As the living paintings themselves are lit and assembled, non-diegetic ecclesiastical music begins to blend with and then subdue the on-set voices, reminding us of Ovid's all-but-imperceptible transitions from storytelling to commentary. Godard supplements such narrative devices with overt B RECHTIAN violations of the generic forms he amalgamates. Even in the midst of vigorous intercourse an actor in Passion asks his partner: 'What is the line? ' His disconcerting question anticipates the tendency of actors in Helas pour moi to overleap the fourth wall by repeating the words of the title or stepping out of character to inquire about whether a scene 'works'. Hence the most obvious intermediary between Ovid and Godard would seem not to be ROB ERTO R O S S ELLINI (to whom Godard attributes the erasure of various distinctions between fic­ tion and non-fiction), but Luis Bufi.uel, whom he cites implicitly in an intertitle which itself undergoes a series of transformations (to become THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL) in Week-end ( 1 967). Hints embedded in Godard's oeuvre suffice to illustrate the what, why and whence of his Ovidian inspiration. Anthony R. Guneratne Ovid. Metamorphoses, 2 0 1 8 . --- . Metamorphoses, 2 vols. , 1 977· . Les Metamorphoses, 1 99 2 . Jonathan Rosenbaum. Essential Cinema, 2004. Richard Roud. Jean-Luc Godard, 1 980. Richard Suchenski. Projections ofMemoiy, 2 0 1 6. ---

P I ER PAOLO PAS OLI NI The ' C inema of Poetry'

LTHOUGH THE DIRECTOR'S

films are cited numerous times in Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), Jean-Luc Godard rarely speaks about Pier Paolo Pasolini. The two always treated each other with respect, yet a large number of Godard's comments about Pasolini are virulent criticisms of the talks given by the Italian director at the Pesaro Festival of New Cinema from 1 965-67, the most famous being 'Il "cinema di poesia " ' in 1 965. Godard took part in the festivals, and likely read French versions of Pasolini's 1 965 and 1 967 talks (the latter known in English as 'Observations on the Sequence Shot') in Cahiers du Cinema, as he acknowledges being familiar with both in interviews; a partial Italian publication of 'The "Cinema of Poetry" ' appeared in Filmcritica in 1 965, although the full Italian text was not published until 1 9 7 2 , in Pasolini's volume of collected texts Heretical Empiricism. Pasolini's Pesaro talks employ the vocabulary and to some extent the methodology of linguistics and semiotics, and were presented in a round table featuring celebrated semiologists Roland Barthes and Christian Metz. 'The " Cinema of Poetry" ' considers the objec­ tive and subjective qualities inherent in cinematic signification, and distinguishes between a 'cinema of prose', associated with conven­ tional narrative and stylistic transparency, and a 'cinema of poetry', in which the camera makes itself felt, often with the pretext of con­ veying a character's way of seeing; Godard's films are placed in the second category (2005, p. 1 8 1). Godard objects in a 1 967 interview that Pasolini's distinction between prose and poetry is nothing new and simply aligns with the way a producer like Sam Spiegel would differentiate between commercial and non-commercial productions ( 1 998M, p. 3 1 2). He acknowledges that Pasolini's intuitions may be of interest, and his writing beautiful, but does not see the 'necessity of the logical discourse that he develops' and objects that 'other things would be equally true' ( l 998M, p. 3 l 2 ). In an article written the previous year, Godard opposed cinema to the discourse of the semiologists, applauding Luc Moullet's attack on them at Pesaro and then apostrophising them: 'Our relatives are

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Le Cinema de poesie, trans. Marianne Di Vettimo & Jacques Bontemps. Cahiers du Cinema 1 7 1 (October 1 965), 54-64.

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Griffith, Hawks, Dreyer and [Andre] BAZIN and [Henri] LANGLO I S , but not you, and furthermore, how can you talk about structures without images and sounds? ' ( 1 998L, p. 2 94). In the 1 967 interview he characterises the semiologists as normative authorities, refers to the 'National Socialism of linguistics', and argues that an approach like Pasolini's is ultimately a normative one: after explaining how the design of an editing table is in fact ideological and leads to a certain kind of cinema, he states: 'This is what I would reproach Pasolini for: his linguistics is a fine reactionary editing table' ( 1 998M, p. 3 1 6). One could interpret Godard's insistence on drawing a line be­ tween cineastes and theorists as a kind of tribalism that has more to do with political and cultural divides than with intellectual ones, and this point of view seems to be implicit in Pasolini's response to the French director's having referred to him as a 'bureaucrat' . In a 1 97 1 preface to a collection of essays on Godard, Pasolini argued that Godard mistakenly associates linguistics and semiology with the bureaucratic authority of the university and therefore assumes that they must be normative ( 1 98 1 , p. 2 8). He goes on to explain that Godard's films carry out the same kind of linguistic research he prac­ tises, performing a "'living semiology" on the cinema', and further argues that Godard is the normative one, given the extent to which his forms have been adopted by other filmmakers ( 1 98 1 , p. 2 8). Pasolini's arguments seem convincing at first glance, and we could easily dismiss Godard's reservations about his methods as the result of a distrust of the institution and tools of academia, or even a perceived rivalry with it or with Pasolini. But given the extent to which Godard's later work insists that one must think not just about but with images, and talk about cinema with cinema, his comments about the problems of dealing with images through 'logical' verbal language need to be taken quite seriously. Pasolini does not address this point in his response, and indeed seems to dismiss it completely through his assertion that Godard simply does with images what he does with words. Godard, however, insists that cineastes look at cin­ ema in an entirely different way from theorists, noting how he does not speak in abstractions but in 'shots', and that a phenomenon must be experienced rather than 'read' ( 1 998L, p. 3 l 3). We can see Godard following through on these ideas in his theoretical films of the 1 9 70s, which insist that words not dominate

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard images and that we not read images as we would words. When Pasolini finally does appear in Histoire(s) du cinema, however, it is as a filmmaker who restores the real rather than replacing it with a seductive double or a theoretical abstraction. One key visual quotation of Pasolini's work occurs in a sequence which refers to the diabolical power of cinema: we see the Christ from his Gospel According to St Matthew ( 1 964) healing a leper, as though enacting the resurrec­ tion through the image that Godard refers to throughout the series. What seems to be drawn out of Pasolini's theoretical work here is his insistence on interrogating the relationship between the image and the real, and on seeing the former as in some way capable of transfig­ uring the latter, as though Godard were tacitly acknowledging that he and Pasolini were, after all, interested in the same problems. Godard was certainly far from the only one to reproach Paso­ lini for his use of semiology, but objections usually came from aca­ demics such as Barthes and Metz, who saw him as an irrational and nai"ve dilettante. Godard perhaps erred in so hastily grouping the three figures together, but one lesson he seems to have learned from Pasolini's forays into semiology is to do on film precisely what the academics reproached the Italian director for doing in his writing, namely adopting and making 'unauthorised' or 'heretical' use of other forms of discourse. We might very well say that the greatest affinity between Godard and Pasolini lies in their insistence on discursive de­ formation and repurposing, but whereas Pasolini's discourses merge together on the common ground of written language, Godard's are absorbed into the cinema, and thus become, as Histoire(s) du cinema reminds us, irrevocably marked by it. Michael Cramer Pier Paolo Pasolini. The 'Cinema of Poetry', 2 005 . ---

. II 'cinema di poesia', 2 0 1 5 .

--- . Le 'Cinema d e poesie', 1 976. Jean-Luc Godard. Trois mille heures de cinema ( 1 966), l 99 8 L. ---

. Lutter sur deux fronts ( 1 967), l 998M.

Pier Paolo Pasolini. Godard < 1 9 7 1 >, l 98 r .

C HARLES P E G U Y Clio: Dialogue between History and the Pagan Soul figure in the history of French letters, Charles Peguy published his first work in 1 897, when he was twenty-four. He continued writing until 1 9 1 4, when he was killed at the Battle of the Marne. His writings were influential through the first half of the twentieth century, but his lit­ erary renown has declined sharply since. It may therefore seem odd that one of his key works, Clio: Dialogue de l'histoire et de l'ame pai"enne (written between 1 909 and 1 9 1 2 , and published posthumously in 1 9 1 7) should assume a position of privileged importance in Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cin ema ( 1 989-98), where it is quoted at length in a crucial passage of Chapter 4 B , 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998). A deep affinity with Godard, however, can be readily detected in the inimitable style of Peguy's writing: in works such as Clio, he inter­ laces theoretical discussions of historiographic practice with gnomic aphorisms and fragmentary quotations, giving the text a serialist quality which, with its contrapuntal use of repetition and variation, has striking parallels with the formal structure of Histoire(s) . Peguy's poetry and essays were notably striated by the sharp vicissitudes of his political and religious beliefs, which can be summed up by an apothegm in Our Youth: 'Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics' (p. 20). Born in poverty, but schooled under HENRI BERGSON at the elite E cole Normale Superieure, his fiery commitment to the defence of Alfred Dreyfus led to a prolonged association with French socialists, particularly Jean Jaures. But by 1 908 he had shifted to the right. Returning to his earlier Catholic beliefs and espousing a conservative nationalism, Peguy supported France's engagement in the First World War. After his death, he be­ came a banner figure for the French far Right, but this political legacy has been hotly contested. HANNAH ARENDT, for instance, noted that Walter Benjamin felt a kinship with him (p. 2 2). During the Occupa­ tion both collaborators and Resistance fighters quoted Peguy. Clio nonetheless attests to the unabashedly anti-modernist senti­ ment imbuing Peguy's late work. The ruminative text is written from the perspective of Clio, the muse of history in Greek mythology, in

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N ENIGMATIC, RECONDITE

Clio: Dialogue de l'histoire et de l'ame pai"enne. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 1 7.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard the form of a largely one-sided conversation with Peguy himself, who is often addressed by name in Clio's monologues. While broaching topics as diverse as the Dreyfus affair, Bergson's concept of durie, rhyme structures in Victor Hugo's Chfttiments and the possibility of being a 'man of the century', these meditations all enter into orbit around the thematic focal point of Clio: the insuperable gulf between the ancient and modern conceptions of time, memory and history. Peguy's debt to Bergson is clear. Developing a Bergsonian theory of the cinematic image, Gilles Deleuze quotes from Clio: 'History is essentially longitudinal; memory essentially vertical. History es­ sentially consists [in] passing [alongside] the event. Being inside the event, memory essentially . . . consists [in] not leaving it' (p. 2 97). Deleuze truncates his quotation, but Peguy continues: 'Memory and history form a right angle. History is parallel to the event; memory is central and axial to it' (p. 3 2 9). While the opposition between memory and history is undoubt­ edly a key hermeneutic framework for Godard's long-term proj ect of investigating the history of the cinema, he turns elsewhere in Clio for 'Les Signes parmi nous'. As Youssef Ishaghpour points out, the concluding chapter of Histoire (s) represents the point at which the work explores its own historiographic method (p. 77). A sequence at the centre of this introspection, lasting nearly seven minutes, is strewn with quotations from Peguy, beginning with a definition of history taken from the first page of Clio: a 'sombre fidelity to fallen things' (p. 6 1 , emphasis in the original; l 998A, vol. 4, p. 248). The rest of the passage largely concerns the impossibility of writ­ ing history. Three lightly reworked extracts from Clio, read in voice­ over by Anne-Marie Mieville, revolve around a seemingly intractable paradox: 'We live in a system where one can do everything, except for the history of what has been done, where one can complete everything, except for the history of this completion . . . . I need a day to write the history of a second. I need a year to write the history of a minute. I need a lifetime to write the history of an hour. I need an eternity to write the history of a day. One can do everything, except the history of what one does' (pp. 2 8 1 , 2 84; l 998A, vol. 4, p. 2 76). These lines were important enough to Godard for them to grace the back cover of the book version of Histoire(s), but Peguy's quotation is interrupted in the film by a well-known excerpt from Hegel's Philosophy of Right ( 1 8 2 l), in which the German philosopher

C H A R L E S P E G UY

laments the inevitable shift between historical events and philosoph­ ical thought: 'When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood' (p. 1 3 ; 1 998A, vol. 4, p. 2 7 1 ) . God­ ard refuses, however, to see a despondent pessimism in this pair of quotations. As he told Michel Ciment, 'Hegel talks about the "end of history" . But he believed history exists, like Pe guy when he wrote Clio. And I believe it does too' (p. 1 2 5). Two further quotations interspersed with the Peguy text in this sequence, taken from ROBERT B R E S S O N and P I ERRE REVERDY, point to a confidence in the ability of history to be carried out: not, how­ ever, through writing, but through the juxtaposition of images-that is, montage. It is the image's testimonial power-its 'ontological realism'-that allows for a resolution of Peguy's historiographical aporia, which can only occur when such images are used to create acts of cinematic montage . Godard offers, at this point, a nod to ANDRE BAZIN, with whose ideas on montage he has been engaged in a long-standing polemic that dates back to the 1 956 article 'Mon­ tage, My Fine Care'. As Mieville's voice-over reads the following passage from Peguy, 'What would it be like if we had to place reality in a book, in books, and, in the second degree, if we had to place reality in reality' (p. 2 8 3 ; 1 998A, vol. 4, p. 2 7 2 ), Godard shows a page of text taken from Bazin's article 'Editing Prohibited', over which is superimposed the words EDITING PROHIBITED I BY ANDR E BAZIN and then a photograph of Bazin himself, superimposed with the words THE SEAMLESS ROBE I OF REALITY ( 1 998A, vol. 4, pp. 2 74-7 5). In a crucial respect, then, Histoire(s) is a resolute, albeit reverent, rebuttal of Godard's former mentor, with a polemical el­ egance worthy of the best of Pe guy's own diatribes. Daniel Fairfax Charles Pe guy. Clio: Dialogue de l'histoire et de l'ame Paienne, w2 3 . Hannah Arendt. Introduction, in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 1 969. Michel Ciment. Film World < wo p , wo9. Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2: The Time-Image < 1 98p, 1 989. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. Jean-Luc Godard & Youssef lshaghpour. Cinema: The Archaeology of Film and the Memory ofa Century , wo5 . G.WF. Hegel. Hegel's Philosophy of Right < 1 8 2 l >, 1 967. Charles Peguy. Notrejeunesse ( 1 909), 1 99 2 .

,

EDOUARD P EI S S ON Outward Bound from Liverpool in the hotel bar in Detective ( 1 985) facing his wife Franc;oise (Nathalie Baye), Emile Chenal (Claude Brasseur) turns the conversation to literature. As their waiter distributes menus, Emile brings up E douard Peisson's Parti de Liverpool . . . , call­ ing it the one and only real book, though he mispronounces the title, and Franc;oise, who hopes to own a bookshop, corrects him. Despite his words, Emile has other favourite books. During the film's open­ ing credit sequence, he opens his briefcase, which contains a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Night Flight ( 1 9 3 l ) , a book that confirms Emile's dedication to his profession as an airline pilot. After men­ tioning Outward Bound from Liverpool, Emile recalls another book by the same author, Edgar's Voyage. Both were childhood favourites for Jean-Luc Godard. As they read the menus, Emile asks the wait­ er: 'What is a salade vaudoise? ' With this sly reference to Godard's boyhood home, the Swiss canton of Vaud, the dialogue in Detective reinforces the association between Peisson's novels of ocean-going adventure and Godard's childhood. Though largely forgotten now, E douard Peisson was a prolific novelist. His personal experiences gave him the raw material for his fiction. He was attracted to the sea as a boy by the stories of his seafaring grandfather and books like EDGAR ALLAN POE's imaginary voyage, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket ( 1 8 3 8). In 1 9 1 4, when he was eighteen, Peisson went to sea himself, gradually rising to a captaincy in the merchant marine. During the First World War he served on a troop transport. \Vb.en the French government reduced the merchant service after the war, Peisson found himself out of work, so he decided to turn novelist. In l 9 3 2 he published Parti de Liverpool . . . , translated into English as Outward Boundfrom Liver­ pool in 1 9 34· In 1 93 8 he published Edgar's Voyage, the story of a boy's fantastic adventures, which became a standard classroom reader. Godard would make further use of these two Peisson novels. In Eloge de /'amour (200 1 ) , Edgar (Bruno Putzulu) learns that a woman who admired him has killed herself, but bequeathed him a book from her personal library. Her grandfather, who gives Edgar the news, lets him choose from three books. He selects the book with a hero who

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Parti de Liverpool . . . . Paris: B . Grasset, 1 9 3 2 ·

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shares his name, Edgar's Voyage. A shot of the front cover bridges the two halves of Eloge de !'amour. Once the cover appears in close-up, the film switches from black and white to brilliant colour and flashes back two years, to a time before Edgar had abandoned his dreams. In JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de dicembre ( 1 994), Godard makes di­ rect reference to Outward Bound from Liverpool, one of several book titles that appear inscribed by Godard into a school exercise note­ book. Outward Bound from Liverpool tells a fast-paced story about the maiden voyage of the Star of the Seas, a poorly-designed ocean liner built to suit the public's burgeoning need for speed. Another phrase inscribed in Godard's notebook is 'Le fond du probleme', the French title of Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter ( 1 948), which tells the story of Henry Scobie, a British police com­ missioner stationed in colonial west Africa. Unable to reconcile his religious beliefs, personal feelings and professional responsibilities, Scobie commits suicide. In one shot of JLG!JLG a close-up depicts the page onto which the words 'Parti de Liverpool' are inscribed. A hand enters the frame and turns the page, revealing the title of Greene's novel on the next page (pp. 2 1-2 2), whereupon the hand turns back to 'Parti de Liverpool ' . The juxtaposition of the two book titles suggests a relationship between them, described elsewhere by the present author as: 'Greene's colonial policeman and Peisson's ocean-going vessel, both isolated from their origins, must fend for themselves, yet both ultimately perish' (p. 1 59). After its initial publication, Outward Boundfrom Liverpool was of­ ten marketed as a boy's book, appearing in more than one illustrated edition. The work contains enough action, intrigue and nautical de­ tail to suit young readers, but it is really more of a grown-up book. It is something people can read when they are young and return to for reflection as adults. A veiled retelling of the Titanic story, Outward Bound from Liverpool escapes the maudlin sentimentalism of typi­ cal Titanic stories by concentrating on the crew's professionalism. Peisson's novel is essentially the story of its skipper, Captain Davis. During the crossing, Davis' mind often reverts to the past as he remembers his highly successful career as a sea captain. His situation in Outward Boundfrom Liverpool provides a touchstone for Godard's self-portrait in JLG/JLG. Like Scobie in The Heart of the Matter and Robert Neville in Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND , another title recorded in God-

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ard's notebook, Captain Davis is an isolato, which is how Godard depicts himself in JLGIJLG: a lonely figure pursuing his career apart from and unmindful of others. The owners selected Davis to skip­ per the Star of the Seas for a reason. Aware the ship has a design flaw, they count on Davis to get it across the ocean safely and in record time. They chose him for the job because his luck was legendary. Throughout his career, Davis had never had even the slightest ac­ cident. He does not realise why they selected him until it is too late. Early in the voyage, Davis accepts his legendary status and ponders the voyages of his past. His personal memories have a visual quality that appealed to Godard: 'This bygone life presented itself to Davis in the form of images that were not of his seeking. They would flash into his brain and utterly annihilate the present' (p. 9 1 ). Because he accepts his legendary status, Davis takes the Star of the Seas through dense fog at top speed only to hit an iceberg. Though the accident dispels the legend, it does not put a halt to the flow of images from the past: 'Divested of his legend he was just an ordinary man . . . . There was still the past to haunt him, those mental pictures of things gone by that had been with him for some days now. They were still there, and they troubled his very soul' (p. 1 92). Paradoxically, the same images from the past that fostered the legend can also serve to illustrate how hollow that legend is. Kevin ]. Hayes Edouard Peisson. Outward Bound from Liverpool, I 9 3 4. --

. Parti de Liverpool

.

.

.

, 2 007.

Jean-Luc Godard. JLG/JLG et autres textes, 2 0 2 2 . Kevin ]. Hayes. JLG!JLG-Autoportrait de decembre, 2 00 2 B .

EDG AR ALLAN P OE William Wilson

IN JEAN-LUC GODARD'S

film Pierrot le Jou (1 965), after Ferdi­ nand Griffon Gean-Paul B elmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) run away together, they find themselves on the Mediterranean coast in need of money. As they are surrounded by tourists, Ferdinand has an idea for them to get some cash. He says to Marianne: 'Let's tell them some stories. They will feel sorry for us when we move them with words'. When Marianne asks what stories, Ferdinand offers several possibilities including 'the one about William Wilson, who met his double in the street one day, and then searched everywhere for him, to kill him. When he'd eventually done it, he found out he had killed himself, and it was his double who was still alive'. Ferdinand has in mind Edgar Allan Poe's great Doppelganger story, 'William Wilson'. Always an innovator, Poe reversed the tradi­ tional perspective of the Doppelganger tale, having the evil Wilson narrate and the good Wilson serve as the double who plagues him. By killing the good Wilson, the evil one kills his own conscience and therefore essentially kills himself by destroying any possible hope of redemption. Ferdinand's brief synopsis echoes something the good Wilson, who forms the other's mirror image, says to the evil one at the end of Poe's story: 'You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, hence­ forward art thou also dead-dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope ! In me didst thou exist-and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself' (pp. 3 56-5 7). The reference to Poe's tale not only foreshadows the conclusion to Godard's film, it reverberates throughout Pierrot le Jou. After evoking 'William Wilson' , Ferdinand echoes the story's conclu­ sion, reusing Poe's mirror image: 'We have entered the age of the Double-Man. One no longer needs a mirror to speak to oneself' . Within the context of the film, Ferdinand's comment arises from personal experience. His dissatisfaction with married life in Paris is what had prompted him to run away with Marianne in the first

I

William Wilson. The Gift: A Christmas and New Year'.s- Present for 1 840, ed. Eliza Leslie. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1 8 3 9, 2 2 9-5 3 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard place. During the opening sequence, Ferdinand sits in his bathtub reading Elie Faure's H I S TO RY OF ART. Immersed in the tub, he tries to immerse himself in Faure's lyrical prose, to appreciate both good writing and great art. The entrance of his daughter does not inter­ rupt his reading, for he can share the book with her. The entrance of his wife does. The lifestyle his behaviour represents is opposed to the lifestyle his wife envisions for him. A daughter of capitalism, she wants him to enter the world of business, a world where people attend cocktail parties and spout advertising slogans as if they were echoes from Parnassus. Ferdinand's solution-to run away with Marianne-lets him escape his wife but does not reconcile his double nature. Marianne does take him away from the bourgeois establishment in which he was mired, but her conception of him, like his wife's, opposes his own. She insists on calling him 'Pierrot' after the clown of French popular culture, but every time she does so, he corrects her to reas­ sert his identity: 'My name is Ferdinand'. Ferdinand's double nature also symbolises the clash between high and low culture. On the road, Marianne says they could go to Chicago, Las Vegas or Monte Carlo; Ferdinand would prefer Florence, Venice or Athens. Once they get settled at the Mediterranean, these differences become manifest. He wants to read, to enjoy the world of ideas; she just wants to have fun. Pierrot, as she sees him, is fun-loving, but Ferdinand, as he wishes to be, is a lover of art, literature and philosophy. Poe's William Wilson can never reconcile the two halves of him­ self. The evil Wilson never accepts the good Wilson, his conscience, as part of him. Similarly, Ferdinand, the mind, can never reconcile himself with Pierrot, the body. Not until his death do the two selves become one, a unification that also reconciles high and low culture. Ferdinand commits suicide in the end, but he does so in a manner that resembles the behaviour of a cartoon character-especially Yosemite Sam, who often gets blown to smithereens. Ferdinand wraps sticks of dynamite around his head and lights the fuse, but then, having second thoughts, unsuccessfully attempts to snuff out the fuse. After his cartoonish suicide, Ferdinand, in dialogue with Marianne, can recite lines from Arthur Rimbaud's poem 'Eternity' in his volume A SEASON IN HELL. In 'Pierrot My Friend', an essay Godard published in Cahiers du Cinema to promote Pierrot le Jou, he mentions 'William Wilson'

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2 47

again. His comments broaden the interpretive possibilities of Poe's story, which, from Godard's perspective, forms an analogue for the cinema. As Godard interprets the tale, Wilson 'thought he had seen his double in the street, followed him, killed him, realised he was him­ self and that he, who remained alive, was only his double. Wilson, as they say, was [living out] a film. Taken literally, this expression gives us a pretty good idea, or definition by the [film itselfJ , of the problems of the cinema, where the real and the imaginary are clearly distinct and yet are one, like the Moebius curve which has at the same time one side and two' (p. 2 1 4). William Wilson is cinema. Having duplicated himself, he destroys the original, leaving only the copy, the film of himself, to survive. Poe's tale would continue to resonate in French cinema. Godard was not the only filmmaker of his generation to find the story of Wil­ liam Wilson appealing. A couple of years later Louis Malle adapted Poe's tale as William Wilson, which forms part of the omnibus film Spirits of the Dead ( 1 968) and stars Alain Delon in the double title role. The following decade Joseph Losey directed Mr Klein ( 1 976), a Doppelganger story set during the Holocaust which also stars Alain Delon, who plays both a French Jew and a gentile. The authorities confuse the two, and the gentile gets taken to a death camp. When Godard made Nouvelle Vague ( 1 990), another Doppelganger story, who should he cast in the starring role but Louis Malle's William Wilson and Joseph Losey's Mr Klein: Alain Delon. Kevin J. Hayes Edgar Allan Poe. William Wilson, 1 984. -- .

William Wilson, 1 98 9 .

Jean-Luc Godard. Pierrot My Friend < 1 96s>, 1 9860.

EDG AR ALLAN P OE The Oval Portrait PUBLICITY STILL taken during the filming of the eleventh tableau in Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962) depicts Nana (Anna Karina) and the Philosopher (Brice Parain) seated in a cafe across the table from one another. On the table rests a copy of Sigmund Freud's Three Essays on the Theory ofSexuality. The still photograph reveals Jean-Luc Godard's plan to use the book as part of his mise en scene, but he subsequently chose to film their conversation using a shot-reverse shot technique. The alternating close-ups of the two characters omit the tabletop and the book from the scene altogether. Perhaps Godard recognised that the book was unnecessary because he had another text that could function similarly. The comment Freud makes in Three Essays that is most pertinent to the cinema concerns how the act of looking can trigger libidinous excitement. By lingering at this stage of arousal, Freud argues, an artist-a painter, author, filmmaker-can redirect the libido towards the creation of art. In the twelfth and final tableau of Vivre sa vie, Godard would use a classic work of American literature to deliver this idea: 'The Oval Portrait' . In this tale Edgar Allan Poe tells the story of an artist whose wife perishes while she sits as a model for his painting, her death coming as soon as the portrait reaches perfection. 'The Oval Portrait' mani­ fests an idea that runs throughout Poe's work and that he would ar­ ticulate in 'The Philosophy of Composition' ( l 846) . The most poeti­ cal topic in the world, Poe asserts, is the death of a beautiful woman. 'Life in Death'-the title of Poe's initial 1 842 version of the text, which he revised and published as 'The Oval Portrait' three years later-reveals his willingness to trade life-a woman's life-for art. In the final tableau of Vivre sa vie the Young Man (Peter Kasso­ vitz) relaxes on the bed in Nana's room with his head propped against the wall. He holds a copy of Poe's Complete Works in French. The book's cover appears clearly enough to identify the precise edition: CHARLES BAUDELAIRE's translation of Poe's works issued by Gibert Jeune, a publisher specialising in major authors from French literary history. The open book obscures the young man's face, partly cover­ ing his mouth, but he is apparently reading to Nana from 'The Oval

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Life in Death. Graham 's Magazine 20, no. 4 (April 1 842), 2 00- r .

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Portrait'. Rainer Werner Fassbinder enjoyed the shot so much he modelled a shot in The Little Chaos ( l 966) after it. Although The Little Chaos is more indebted to Bande a part ( 1 964), Franz, the character Fassbinder himself plays, appears in one scene with his head propped up against a wall reading from a book, which partly obscures his face. The book is not Poe's complete works, but Henry de Montherlant's misogynistic novel The Girls ( 1 9 3 6). The shot nevertheless clearly recalls Vivre sa vie. The shots of the Young Man reading 'The Oval Portrait' in Vivre sa vie are intercut with close-ups of Nana. The voice that reads the text aloud is not the actor's, but the director's. At one point as he reads, Godard interrupts the written text to speak directly to his wife and star, Anna Karina. He calls Poe's tale 'our story . . . a painter portraying his love' . Susan Sontag appreciated Godard's use of 'The Oval Portrait' to telegraph Nana's death in the following scene, but she strongly disliked Godard's extra-diegetic interruption, which she famously called 'the one false step in Vivre sa vie' (p. 98). Others have appreciated Godard's deliberate effort to call attention to the under­ lying conditions of the filmmaking process, to highlight the idea that the filmmaker, like Poe's painter, lingers at the looking stage in the process of libidinal arousal to channel his desire into his art. In 'The Oval Portrait', Poe says that 'some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well' (p. 48 3). The creation of art, Poe implies, requires both love and talent, one complement­ ing the other, an idea Godard echoes in Vivre sa vie. Harun Farocki argues that the attitude towards art Poe and Godard share is mascu­ locentric. By their approach, a male artist is necessary to recreate female beauty in a work of art. Other filmmakers have felt a similar impulse. Farocki mentions Josef von Sternberg as a parallel exam­ ple: 'The woman has "talent", but she herself does not understand it. Only the male artist can conjure the timeless masterpiece out of the woman's quotidian flesh' (p. 2 8). Godard has often likened his relationship with Anna Karina during these years with that between Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, seeing himself as imitating Stern­ berg, but he protests that 'in cinema, Sternberg didn't shoot Marlene Dietrich with a pistol. Which doesn't mean that what you say didn't exist, that I didn't use [Karina] as an object. Agreed' (p. 7 5).

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Regardless of its specific meaning in Vivre sa vie, Godard's refer­ ence to 'The Oval Portrait' acknowledges his general debt to Poe's fiction, which he would use in subsequent films. Like the reference to 'The Oval Portrait', the references to other Poe tales honour the author yet also let Godard situate himself with kindred spirits in the history of the creative arts. Fassbinder's use of Godard in The Little Chaos functions similarly. Both Godard and Fassbinder recognise the importance of placing themselves and their work within an aesthetic tradition, no matter how much their creative processes may alter that tradition. Godard's reference to 'The Oval Portrait' also acknowledges Poe's seminal influence on the cinema. As the present author has argued in a biography of Poe, 'Poe's imagery frequently anticipates a visual aesthetic that would not emerge until the invention of mo­ tion pictures' (p. 2 3). Other filmmakers have similarly recognised Poe's influence. Speaking about his documentary film One Man s War, which uses freeze frames to capture faces of people who would fall victim to the Holocaust, the Argentine filmmaker Edgardo Coz­ arinsky (who was named after Poe) mentions his desire to 'rescue the faces of these people and preserve them' . Asked if cinema generally reflects this impulse, Cozarinsky said: 'For me its best expression is to be found in "The Oval Portrait", the Poe story. In a sense that is the most extraordinary thing ever to be written about the cinema' (p. 404). Cozarinsky's remark is anachronistic, of course, but it does sug­ gest that Poe understood what would become both a major theme of Vivre sa vie and a central impulse of the cinema: to channel love into the act of capturing the source of its beauty and mystery. Kevin ]. Hayes Edgar Allan Poe. The Oval Portrait, 1 984. ---

. Le Portrait ovale, 1 989.

Edgardo Cozarinsky. Discourse and History, 2 005. Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television

< 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Kevin ]. Hayes. Edgar Allan Poe, 2 009. Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki . Speaking about Godard, 1 998. Susan Sontag. On Godard's Vivre sa vie ( 1 964), 1 968.

EDG AR ALLAN P OE The Power of Words

Jean-Luc Godard has always displayed a sin­ gular interest in language and the power of words or, its inverse, the inadequacy of language as an instrument of hu­ man communication. In his video short Puissance de la parole ( 1 988), these ideas receive what is perhaps their most abstruse treatment by Godard through a mash-up of two distinctly different literary works: James M. Cain's 1 934 crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice and Edgar Allan Poe's l 845 prose poem 'The Power of Words' ('puissance de la parole' in French). The work takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between two angels, the younger spirit Oinos, who has only recently departed from the Earth, and the older spirit Agathos, who guides Oinos through the celestial spheres and an­ swers the metaphysical questions which the younger spirit poses. The imbrication of low and high literary texts is indicative of the dense network of literary allusions in Godard's films and his pen­ chant for orchestrating collisions between conflicting sign systems. The video was financed by the French telecommunications giant France Telecom, presumably to promote their products and services, but in typical fashion Godard turns the film into an anti-commercial for the phone company, repeatedly highlighting the breakdown of communication and the failure of communication technology, espe­ cially the telephone, represented in the video by an old-fashioned, rotary dial device that would be more at home in Tay Garnett's 1 946 adaptation of Cain's novel than Godard 's postmodernist video collage. Essentially non-narrative, Godard's appropriation of Cain and Poe creates a strong sense of drama even in the absence of a co­ herent story. Shot and edited in a style characteristic of much of Godard's later video work, the piece is an often bewildering succes­ sion of images presented through montage, superimpositions and tape loops in which movements are repeated, slowed down, stopped and then resumed. Meaning is produced through the clash of the film's visual signifiers. In a similar fashion, the soundtrack overlaps and combines electronic sound effects, snatches of dialogue (both

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HE WORK OF

The Power of Words. United States Magazine and Democratic Review 2 6 Qune 1 845), 602-4.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard diegetic and non-diegetic) and music from sources as varied as Bach, Beethoven, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss. Paintings by Picasso and Max Ernst also punctuate the flow of images. Puissance de la parole establishes a pronounced binary qual­ ity in its juxtaposition of characters as well as in its collage of sounds and images, all of which restate and explore similar ideas in different ways. The twin literary sources of the video, with their very different characters and thematic concerns, are shown to exemplify similar philosophical dilemmas and constitute two distinct textual strands within the video's overall structure. In the first, a gas station attendant named Frank Gean-Michel Iribarren) (whom Godard depicts as having a limp, unlike the char­ acter of Frank Chambers in Cain's novel) tries to call his lover on the phone but is unable to do so because of a bad connection. His loneliness and isolation are emphasised by the repetition of the word 'Hello? ' heard in a tape loop echoing in eerie reverberations. God­ ard rapidly intercuts images of Frank trying to speak on the phone with shots of the Earth from outer space in which we see a telecom­ munications satellite swing into view and gradually block our view of the planet. Inexplicably, the lover he is desperately calling is not the character Cora, the unhappy wife who commits adultery and plots to murder her husband with Frank in Cain's novel. Rather, Frank is calling out to Velma, the main character in Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely, yet another reference to the tradition of the American roman noir to which Godard has turned for visual and the­ matic inspiration since A bout de souffie ( 1 960). Velma (Lydia Andrei) receives Frank's call while bathing and dressing in what looks to be a cramped, lower-middle-class kitchen. The snatches of dialogue which appear in the video are from Chapter 1 2 , in which Frank and Cora confront the moral consequences of their actions and recog­ nise the destructive impact of what they have done, rendering their love for each other impossible. Godard's use of dialogue from The Postman Always Rings Twice may be another joke at Telecom's expense, the 'postman' reference evoking an earlier mode of communication (the postal service). In fact, there is no postman in Cain's book: the title was a reference to the notorious Snyder-Grey murder trial upon which Cain loosely based the events in the novel. The second strand of the film involves a colloquy between 'Miss Oinos' and 'Mr Agathos', Poe's asexual angels now embodied in

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the form of a fashionably-dressed young woman (Laurence Cote) and a wise older man Gean Bouise)-a recurring motif in Godard's late films. At one point Mr Agathos stoops to lovingly stroke Miss Oinos' calf and ankle through her bright red stockings. In Poe's work, the initial metaphysical question has to do with the nature of the Creator and whether the act of creation is a singular event or an ongoing process throughout time. Agathos answers that 'in the beginning only, he created', and that 'as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result' (p. 82 3). The idea that every action initiates an infinite series of reactions carries the implication that words themselves possess a physical power. The abstraction of Mr Agathos' metaphysical discourse, delivered with a cool detachment and professorial authority, is at odds with the violent outbursts of passion that alternate in the dialogue between Frank and Velma, and this pattern is repeated through intercutting images of flowing water and erupting volcanoes, often slowed down or arrested. Words may indeed have physical power in the innumerable consequences that stem from their use, but they cannot guarantee understanding or as­ sure that real communication occurs. Ultimately Poe's text serves to establish the intellectual core of the piece while Cain's text functions as a sort of narrative armature upon which Godard drapes dramatic moments evocative of Puissance de la parole's philosophical interest in the ambiguous nature of communication. John Parris Springer Edgar Allan Poe. The Power of Words, 1 98+ ---

. Puissance de la parole, r 989.

EZRA P OU ND The Cantos of Le Mepris ( 1 963),Jean-Luc Godard's elegy for a lost cinema filtered through the production of an ill-fated adaptation of The Odyssey, he left his fictional Odysseus on the roof of the Casa Malaparte, that great wedge of modern­ ist architecture jutting out from the cliffs of Capri, as the camera whirred behind him, and sky and sea unfurled towards a final cut. To rediscover Odysseus, one must travel through thirty-five years of Godard's career to the final part of Histoire(s) du Cinema ( 1 989-98), Chapter 4B , 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), where Odysseus is the thread linking Godard to the modernist American poet Ezra Pound. The penultimate voice we hear at the culmination of Godard's epic account of the interrelations between film and twentieth-century history belongs to Pound, reading from the first of the Cantos (200 1 ) . Pound's great multi-part poem was his attempt t o write a 'poem containing history', composed over half a century from the 1 9 1 0s to the 1 960s, with early versions of the first three cantos published in three successive issues of Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine in 1 9 1 7 and the final section of the poem, Drafts and Fragments, published in 1 969 (the first complete edition came in 1 970). It marked the continu­ ation of his experiments into poetic form, pioneered in Imagism and Vorticism, to create a poetics that could encompass high speech and low doggerel, condottieri and scoundrels, and a historical sweep that extended from Ancient Greece and Confucian China to Medieval Provence and contemporary Italy. He described his method as 'ideo­ grammic', in reference to the Chinese poetry which had influenced him as a young man, when he saw in the ideogram's tense union of form and idea a way to shirk off the crud of late Victorian verbiage. The poem's composition tracked Pound's life: the modernist tyro in London and Paris, championing James Joyce and T . S . ELIOT, sparring with Ernest Hemingway and disdaining the Bloomsbury set, giving way to the Fascist propagandist in Mussolini's Italy, en­ tertaining anti-semitic fantasies as the poetry shrivelled into lists and grievances, before fuming and blustering on Radio Rome during the Second World War. And then, nearly two decades of incarceration:

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N THE FINAL MOMENTS

A Draft ofXVI Cantos of Ezra Pound for the Beginning of a Poem of Some Length. Paris: Three Mountain Press, 1 9 2 5 .

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first in an American internment camp outside of Pisa, where, in the darkest moment of his life, he produced in The Pisan Cantos ( 1 948) some of his greatest poetry, followed by seventeen years in an asylum outside of Washington D.C., a diagnosis of personality disorder pre­ venting a treason trial that could have led to his execution. Running to 800 pages and with a textual density rivalled only by Joyce's Finnegans Wake ( 1 9 3 9), the Cantos are a monument to a lost culture. As modernism itself slips into history it can seem a work of impenetrable difficulty and strangeness, but one figure remains a constant through the poem: Odysseus, whose journey becomes a mirror for Pound's own restless wanderings, and a thread that ties him to a vision of culture and history. Indeed, in keeping with the dialogic, polyvocal technique that is central to his poetic project, Pound begins the poem with a sixteenth-century Latin translation of Book l l of Homer's Odyssey, the so-called Nekyia, which recounts the descent of Odysseus into the underworld to speak with the ghost of the soothsayer Tiresias so that he may discover whether he will end his wanderings and return to his homeland of lthaca. It is a frag­ ment from this section of the poem that we hear as Histoire (s) draws to a close : But first Elpenor came, our Friend Elpenor I Unburied, cast on the wide earth I Limbs that we left in the house of Circe I Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other I Pitiful spirit (p. 4; r 998A, vol. 4, p. 3 04).

Before he can speak with the blind The ban seer, Odysseus is ac­ costed by other shades-the first of whom is Elpenor, the youngest member of his crew who has been killed in a drunken fall from the roof of Circe's house. We know no more about him: youth and fool­ ishness are his only traits. At first, Odysseus believes Elpenor merely made the journey to Hades more quickly than the rest, and it is with shock that he comes to understand the truth: Elpenor remains cast adrift in Hades because he has yet to be buried and is trapped in a state of limbo. It is this interstitial status of Elpenor, between life and death, which is his most marked characteristic. Odysseus' descent and his meeting with Elpenor then become one element in Pound's ideogrammic conception of history, allowing us to see interconnec­ tions between the different epochs through which the poem passes, hearing voices from the past emerge from the babble of history for a moment, only to return once more to silence.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Despite Godard stressing in his narration earlier in the chapter that 'in the cinema we don't have books I we only have music and painting' ( 1 998A, vol. 4, p. 1 8 3), it is telling, in light of the central project(ion) of Histoire(s), that Pound should enter the work at its close. Of course, Godard's Histoire(s) is itself largely composed of visual and verbal 'quotations', creating a dense weave of images, cap­ tions and sounds, from grainy newsreels to the glossiest of Holly­ wood musicals: it is this, perhaps, which lies behind Godard's decision to use Pound's lines at this point, gesturing to his insistent refrain that there is no one history, only histories-something to which the very title of Histoire(s) alludes. As with Pound, Godard's frac­ turing and fragmenting of his sources is a form of transformation and translation. Pound's use of the ideogram and Godard's expanded conception of montage as it has developed over the past three dec­ ades have common cause in this regard: Godard has placed himself in a direct line of descent from Sergei Eisenstein, although he has claimed that 'Eisenstein naturally thought he had found montage . . . . But by montage I mean something much more vast' ( 2 000, p. 1 7), as if expanding it beyond the limits of cinema to include history itself. When Godard quotes Pound quoting Homer, the effect is dizzy­ ing. But why, from all of Pound's oeuvre, should Godard use this fragment, and particularly in a place of such prominence? Perhaps a clue can be found in the construction 'Elpenor, unburied'-and one must hear the great rolling r-sounds Pound wrings from both words-for here one finds what the present author believes to be its central theme: that Elpenor not having been given his funeral rites is the cause of his anguished seeking of Odysseus. Is it not possible, therefore, to equate Elpenor with Godard's conception of both cin­ ema and history at the end of the twentieth century, and to claim that both are, effectively, unburied? In Godard's cinematographic underworld, his Nekyia raises other shades who haunt our present so that we too may become poets of our desolate time. Corin Depper Ezra Pound. The Cantos, 1 99 3 ·

--- . Les Cantos, 2 0 1 3 . Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , 1 998A. Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound Reads Ezra Pound (audio recording) ( 1 960), 2 0o r . Michael Temple & James S . Williams. Introduction to the Mysteries of Cinema, 2000.

F REDERI C P ROKOS C H Nine Days to Mukalla

N FOR EVER MOZART

( 1 996) Camille (Madeleine Assas), an un­ employed professor of philosophy, her cousin J er6me (Frederic Pierrot) and Djamila (Ghalia Lecroix), the family maid, set off for the war in Sarajevo, where they plan to stage a production of Alfred de Musset's DON ' T TRIFLE WITH LOVE to entertain the troops. Partway into their journey, they must proceed on foot through rugged, wintertime terrain, an arduous experience for the charac­ ters and, obviously, the actors. One day Djamila falls asleep on the ground in a snowy woods. In a close-up shot she appears grasping Hasards de !'Arabie heureuse, Helene de Sarbois' French translation of Frederic Prokosch's Nine Days to Mukalla. This novel begins with a plane crash. Its four passengers-two English women and two American men-must travel from Kamar Bay on the southern Arabian coast to Mukalla. They face hardship and prejudice throughout their journey, and only one survives. The French translation appeared in 1 9 5 5 ; Jean-Luc Godard had known about its author at least since 1 96 3 , when he named Jack Palance's character in Le Mepris after him: Jerry Prokosch. Both the real-life novelist and the fictional movie producer are Americans, but their other similarities are not readily apparent. Palance's character is brash, obnoxious and self-centred: the Ugly American writ large. Frederic Prokosch established his literary career writing poetry. He retained the soul of a poet after switching to novels. Description is his forte. His penetrating eye and imaginative figures of speech vividly depict the land through which his wanderers pass. Nine Days to Mukalla is not the main work that connects its author with Le Mepris. ' Sunburned Ulysses', the opening poem to his 1 94 1 collection of verse, Death at Sea, shows that Frederic Prokosch had already done what Jerry Prokosch was trying to do: to adapt Homer's Odyssey far a modern audience. In Prokosch's poem, an insatiably restless Ulysses does not relish his return to Ithaca, to a boring life of comfortable sameness. He would rather keep travel­ ling. Prokosch's fiction carries over many ideas and imagery from his verse. Reviewing Nine Days to Mukalla, Gore Vidal concluded: 'Here, once again, he renders that vision which is obsessively his own: the

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Nine Days to Mukalla. New York: Viking, 1 9 5 3 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard traveller in a strange country, the sunburned Ulysses of his poems, the alien who moves across time, anticipating with a melancholy fas­ cination his last arrival, a private death in some ironically gleaming land' (p. 6) . Because the clash between the West and the Middle East forms the predominant theme of Nine Days to Mukalla, it is significant that Ghalia Lecroix's character is the one holding the book in For Ever Mozart. Born in Tunisia, Lecroix is the only person of colour in the film. Godard enhanced her character's importance by giving her a famous name. She is named after Djamila Bouhired, a renowned militant who joined the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), became liaison agent for FLN commander Yacef Saadi and was ar­ rested and tortured to international outrage. In For Ever Mozart Djamila volunteers to go to Sarajevo because she is dissatisfied with her life as a domestic servant. Once she vol­ unteers, Camille assigns her the subservient role of Rosetta, the local peasant girl in Don 't Trifle with Love. Serb paramilitaries take them prisoner and attempt to rape Djamila. Camille, who looks on, says, 'Poor Rosetta' (p. l l 3). Though seemingly sympathetic, Camille's words deny Djamila's identity. Camille sees Djamila only in terms of the role she has assigned her. The clash of cultures in Nine Days to Mukalla occurs between the Western travellers and the Arabs they encounter; in For Ever Mozart, the cultural clash occurs among the travellers, thus conveying the increasing complexity of the relations between Europe and the Middle East. The title of Sarbois' translation incorporates the traditional French name for what is now Yemen: Arabie heureuse. This name re­ sulted from a bad translation of the Roman name for Yemen: Arabia felix. The term 'felix' refers mainly to the region's fertility, but Arabia heureuse or 'Happy Arabia' suggests a place of ease and contentment, a land of magic-carpet rides and wish-dispensing genies. The French name for this region thus creates unintended irony. The name has become a general term that embodies Western attitudes towards the Arab world as a whole, as Godard would demonstrate in Le Livre d'image (20 1 8). Its last chapter, which occupies nearly half of the film, is titled 'La Region centrale' after the 1 97 1 film by Canadian film­ maker Michael Snow. Godard uses the phrase to mean the Middle East. Early in the chapter, an intertitle supplies the prepositional phrase UNDER WESTERN EYES. Repeating the title of a Joseph

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Conrad novel, it means in this context the interpretation of the Mid­ dle East from a Western perspective. The phrase HAP PY ARAB IA occurs as both an intertitle and as a close-up from the half-title page of a volume from Alexandre Dumas' collected works, which includes L'Arabie heureuse ( 1 860) by Louis du Couret, who went by the name Abd ul-Hamid. 'La Region centrale' largely consists of clips from films pro­ duced and directed in the Arab world. Much as earlier chapters in Le Livre d'image show the interrelationship between Western cinema and history, such as the cinematic portrayal of train travel and the deportation of Jews during the Second World War, the last chapter explores the relationship between Arab history and cinema. One clip comes from Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's most renowned work, Jamila, the Algerian ( 1 958). Released during the Algerian War just one year after Bouhired's arrest and torture, Jamila was banned in Algeria, but Chahine's stirring portrayal of Djamila Bouhired, part Scarlet O'Hara and part Joan of Arc, galvanised the Arab world, helping create solidarity with the Algerian cause. The images and ideas Godard displays in the film's fifth chapter had been on his mind a long time. The close-up shot of a Tunisian-born actor in For Ever Mozart clutching a copy of Hasards de !'A rabie heureuse, whose character is named after an Algerian freedom-fighter, contains Le Livre d'image in a nutshell . Kevin ]. Hayes Frederic Prokosch. Hasards de l'Ambie heureuse, 200 5 . Jean-Luc Godard. JLG/JLG e t azttres textes, 202 2 . Gore Vidal. Disaster and Flight, 1 95 3 .

M ARC EL P ROU S T In Search of Lost Time scornfully described the cinema as a simple 'procession of things'-adding 'nothing is fur­ ther from what we have really perceived than the vision that a cinematograph presents' (vol. 6, p. 2 79)-he was not writing about the same cinema that Walter Benjamin invoked to deem A la recherche du temps perdu 'cinematic' (p. 1 79). Nor was he, in the early twentieth century, describing the same cinema that Jean-Luc God­ ard memorialised in Histoire(s) du cinema between 1 989 and 1 998. Where, for Proust, cinema was a procession of images, Godard's cin­ ema is a superimposition, a rapid-fire montage, a pastiche of images lost and found. It is in the soil of this later-twentieth-century cin­ ema that a critical tradition of comparing Proust's project to that of Godard has flourished. Alessia Ricciardi even describes Histoire(s) as an 'involuntary adaptation' of Proust's novel (p. 644), while Miriam Heywood compares Proust's seven-volume text and Godard's eight­ part video essay, deeming them both essentially modernist because essentially cinematic: 'Cinema', she writes, 'provides the tools with which to recognise Proust's and Godard's shared poetic enterprise' (p. l ) . Of course, film is the medium of neither work, but both share certain formal investments-non-linear temporality, deep subjectiv­ ity, estranging syntax-that accords with Heywood's post-medium ontology of cinema. Godard claims to have wanted to adapt In Search of Lost Time; although he failed to do so, Proust's vocabulary of involuntary mem­ ory-the medium through which his protagonist's past becomes present-nevertheless finds its echo in Godard's renunciation of the 'objective' logic of linear history in favour of the 'subj ective' contin­ gencies of editing and montage. Rather than serving as the author of source material for an (involuntary) adaptation, though, Proust plays the role of an icon and foil for Godard's Histoire(s), as the director labours to reassert the project of French modernism at the twilight of the twentieth century and the dawn of the digital revolution. Culled from Godard's own archive of images and composed with his video-editing machine at his home in Rolle, Switzerland,

W

HEN MARCEL PROUST

A la recherche du temps perdu, Gallimard, 1 9 1 9- 1 9 2 7 .

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v o l s . Paris: Grasset,

l

9l 3;

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Histoire(s) takes the form of a personal reverie on cinematic history and memory. Chapter 2B of Histoire(s) du cinema, 'Fatale beaute' ( 1 998), stages the work's most explicit interaction with Proust. The words LOST TIME appear over the image of celluloid moving through a Steenbeck, and Godard's voice-over pronounces the famous first lines of Proust's novel: 'for a long time I I would go to bed early' . He continues : 'I say that I and all of a sudden I Albertine is gone I and time is found I and that is because I it's the novelist talking I but what if it was I the filmmaker I who had to talk without saying anything' (1 998A, vol. 2 , pp. 1 56-59). What distinguishes the novelist from the filmmaker? Both can manipulate time-regaining it by way of metonymy and metaphor­ and both incite mental images that persist in the reader/spectator's imagination long after the medium of manuscript, print, celluloid or video has itself disappeared from view. Indeed, when Godard claims that the filmmaker talks without saying anything, mobilising images to speak for themselves, he may be thinking as much about Proust as himself: Proust 'thinks in images', he has claimed ( 1 998, p. 430). In this sense, Proust the novelist and Godard the filmmaker are distinguished less by their artistic media than by their histori­ cal positions: one before and the other after the Second World War, before and after the era of celluloid. The cinema and modernism of their respective times are made irreconcilable by the world history that stands between them. Invoking a pun on bonne heure (early) and bonheur (happiness), Godard proceeds to rewrite Proust's opening sentences with the hindsight of the war decades-and the celluloid decades-between them: 'je me suis reveille de malheur'-'I would wake up unhappily' ( 1 998A, vol. 2 , p. 1 5 9). Godard says these lines, but he also types them on the machine in front of him, an electronic typewriter. Suspended between the analogue and the digital, the electronic typewriter performs the labour of both modes of communication. The keys of Godard's type­ writer, when pressed, appear on an electronic display with a tem­ porary memory so that his prose could be edited before being sent to the page. The technology developed to facilitate this transaction between author and machine was called, appropriately, the Memory­ writer. That Godard uses an electronic typewriter-a transitional technology bridging the decades between the mechanical typewriter and the computer-is no fluke. By the 1 990s, the device was outdated,

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard if not obsolescent, so for viewers of 'Fatale Beaute', first screened in 1 997, Godard's electronic typewriter would have foregrounded his role as media archaeologist and archivist of lost forms of media. Indeed, Proust and Godard are the memory-writers of their respec­ tive generations. But where the mechanical typewriter is a one-step process (type-impression), mimicking the labour of handwriting­ like that preserved in Proust's notebooks at the Musee Carnavalet in Paris-the electronic keyboard uses a three-step process, mimick­ ing the labour of filmmaking (inscription, editing, impression) . The sound of this final step-a cacophonous, rapid-fire 'rat-a-tat-tat'-is that of a machine-gun-like printing calculator, evoking the war as it tallies receipts, both financial and artistic, for the films and icons included in Godard's pantheon of images. Godard's words, once transplanted from his memory to that of the machine, are placed in circulation-in the electronic circuit of the machine. They are lost from him and reclaimed by the editing machine that stands in for the film editor himself. Neither living (as is the spoken word) nor dead (as is the printed word), the pre-printed words become units of speech that are unresolved: word-spectres held in semantic purgatory. They are, as Jan Verwoert writes of ethical appropriation, of which Godard is a leading practitioner, 'stag[ed] obj ect[s] . . . that invoke the ghosts of unclosed histories in a way that allows them to appear as ghosts and reveal the nature of the ambiguous presence' (p. 2 l ) . Proust haunts Histoire(s) du cinema as one of the work's ghosts of the twentieth century at its close-as a symbol of the writer and of time before they were swept up into the history of cinema. Anna Shechtman Marcel Proust. In Search ofLost Time, 6 vols. , 2003 . ---

. A la recherche du temps perdu, 4 vols. , l 987-89.

Walter Benjamin. A Short Speech on Proust < 1 9 3 2 >, 1 987. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , l 998A. Jean-Luc Godard & Regis Debray. Jean-Luc Godard rencontre Regis Debray ( 1 995), 1 998. Miriam Heywood. Modernist Visions, 2 0 1 2 . Alessia Ricciardi. Cinema Regained, 20o r . Jan Verwoert. Apropos Appropriation, 2 006.

RAY M ON D QU E N E AU Odile is one of several works by Raymond Que­ neau which influenced Jean-Luc Godard, at least in his early years as a critic. His 1 942 novel Pierrot mon ami, with its mixture of popular and erudite language, was another, earning a wink from Godard in a Cahiers du Cinema text, bearing the same ti­ tle, about his film Pierrot leJou ( 1 965). Discussing his film Une Femme est une femme ( 1 96 1 ) the same year as this article, Godard invoked Queneau's literary style in cinematic terms, that of one of the key revolutions he and his Nouvelle Vague cohorts brought to French film: his film had 'that Queneau side of existence, characters who live like that and speak as in a film with "live sound" ' ( 1 9981, p. 2 5 8). Godard, of course, was not alone in his admiration among the young French filmmakers : in 1 960, Louis Malle adapted Queneau's novel Zazie in the Metro ( 1 959), one of the emblematic films of the day. Odile is a semi-autobiographical, mildly self-mocking novel set in the late 1 92 0s. Its sparse plot tells the story of Roland Travy, a young veteran of the North African wars who drifts around Paris, considers joining the Communist Party, and ultimately realises he has fallen in love. Travy associates with a group of sketchy, low-class types and self-absorbed left-wing politicos who are brought together by the eccentric Anglares. Travy wavers in his commitment to the group's political and even epistemological aims and seems incapable of true emotional relationships. He does come to know a series of women, including Odile, who strikes his fancy despite his detachment. Odile looms large in Queneau's novel, though she appears only intermittently. By reducing his eponymous heroine to a secondary role as the object of Travy's affection, Queneau connects Odile to Andre Breton, whose ultra-serious 1 9 2 8 novel NADJA endures as a paradigm of the Surrealist movement. Its own title character re­ mains underdeveloped and ultimately secondary to Breton's project. Considered a roman a clef, Odile lampoons Breton's self-proclaimed status as ruler of the Surrealists via the character of Anglares and his fawning disciples, some of whom contemporary literati would have recognised. Years later Queneau's writing would become more hu­ morous and more critical of the Surrealists. In 1 960 he co-founded

0 DILE: ROMAN

Odile: roman. Paris: Gallimard,

1937.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard the OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle), whose traditions continue today partly as a living parody of the Surrealists. In Odile, by contrast, the satire remains contained and without the whimsy that would eventually emerge in Queneau's writings. Although Godard based Bande a part ( 1 964) on Dolores Hitch­ ens' crime novel Fools' Gold ( 1 95 8), multiple aspects of the film link it to Odile: narrative structure, cultural references and thematic con­ tent. Both Queneau's novel and Godard's film are linear narratives that recount the lives of realistic characters-rather unusually in Godard's case. The opening voice-over, spoken by Godard himself, is a more overt reference: 'My story begins here'. This sentence resembles the repeated opening phrase of Odile: 'When this story begins . . .' Furthermore, repeated comments about the film's action by Godard as the narrator closely parallel the remarks of Queneau's first-person narrator; Godard opens several cinematic 'parentheses' to draw attention to his characters' emotional state, while Queneau inserts narrative markers along the way, including 'We have come to the end of the prologue' . Both conclude with a version of 'My story ends there' . Unmistakably, Godard also names his character Odile, his late mother's name, and the attitude of Godard's Odile (his wife Anna Karina) mirrors that of Queneau's character, a bourgeois rebel. The cinematic Odile has garnered the attention of young Franz (Sarni Frey), who happens to mention a book she should read. Later he purchases a copy of Odile and reads aloud from it, sharing what seems to be a jokey anecdote related by Anglares to his own bande, but which is actually a quotation from Nadja. Though Franz never mentions the title of the book, its cover is visible through the car's windshield in one scene. There are several key plot points shared by the two narratives. Each may be read as a love triangle. In Bande a part Franz introduces Odile to his friend Arthur (Claude Brasseur); both the chemistry between them and Odile's sheer naivete are palpable as they share a smoke break and talk about kissing. Their intimacy is underscored both by the small space they inhabit and Godard's tight camera angles. Later, Arthur 'wins' Odile in a coin toss, and they stroll around the city, ride the metro (here Godard introduces another Surrealist intertext, as Odile sings a poem by ARAGON) , and spend the night together. Franz, clearly having harboured affection for Odile for

RA Y M O N D Q U E N EA U

some time, mopes around and sleeps alone. But he doesn't give up completely: Godard indicates Franz's renewed commitment to her during the famous Madison dance scene. In both works death removes one corner of the love triangle and allows for a happy ending. After a first failed attempt to steal her housemate's money, Arthur assaults Odile out of anger and frustra­ tion; Franz comforts her. Odile and Franz then begin to fantasise about possible getaway destinations-either to Brazil or to 'Jack London country', London's short story NAM - B O K THE UNVERACIOUS having played a role in the film. Subsequently Arthur is killed by his own uncle in a western-style shoot-out, and Odile warms further to Franz's kindness. Queneau, for his part, does not offer any details regarding the nature of Odile's relationship with her boyfriend Tes­ son, but when Travy learns that Tesson has, like Arthur, died from a wound inflicted in a fight between friends, he becomes fixated on Odile's well-being. Odile retreats to her parents' home in the coun­ tryside, prompting Travy to track her down, propose marriage, and rescue her from the provinces. They are wed but their relationship remains platonic and becomes strained; they separate, then Travy has an epiphany that will change his path: 'I just, quite simply, loved Odile, as a man loves a woman, as he should love her' (p. l 1 6) . He re­ turns to France to reunite with his beloved: 'I caught sight of Odile, who was waiting for me' (p. l 1 7). Likewise, Godard confirms Franz's love for his Odile. As they wait for their ship to sail for Brazil, the pair use a fortune-telling device-one that had failed earlier with Arthur-to determine that they are indeed in love. Godard saves the final reference to Queneau's text for the very end of the film. When Odile asks if lions await them in Brazil, Franz replies, 'Yes, and also croc . . . odiles' , employing the pun Travy en­ joyed when first meeting his Odile: 'Le crocodile croque Odile' (the crocodile crunches or munches Odile) (p. 42). In spite of the violence and scandal embedded in these works, they both end on a light note. For once (or twice !), the nice guy doesn't finish last. Catherine Webster Raymond Queneau. Odile, 1 988. --

. Odile, 1 99 2 .

Jean-Luc Godard. Montparnasse-Levallois ( 1 965), 1 9981.

RAY M OND QU ENEAU

T WOULD INDEED

The Fatal Moment

be amazing if Jean-Luc Godard did not meet Raymond Queneau. Quene �u attained prominence late, in 1 959-the year Godard made A bout de souffie ( 1 960)-with his novel Zazie in the Metro. But his earlier work could hardly have escaped the attention of someone with such a keen sense for litera­ ture as the young Godard. Should he have failed to read Queneau's work at the time it was written, he could not at least have failed to encounter the author himself, who figured among the very select team of sponsors of Obj ectif 49, the cine-club initiated by ANDRE BAZIN which, together with ERIC ROHMER 's La Gazette du cinema, would start it all. Of the earlier novels by Queneau, two at least have received spe­ cial attention from Godard: ODILE ( 1 9 3 7), a semi-autobiographical story relating the author's turbulent relationship with the Surreal­ ist group and the first time he met his future wife; and Pierrot man ami ( 1 942), a very ironical heroic treatment of the man in the street. In Bande a part ( 1 964), whilst Claude Brasseur is called Arthur and Samy Frey is called Franz, Anna Karina is named Odile, implicitly associating the writer and poet Queneau with ARTHUR R I MBAUD and Franz Kafka. Odile was also the first name of Godard's mother, who had died just ten years earlier in a scooter accident. As for Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965), Godard himself has drawn the obvious parallel, giving the title of Queneau's novel Pierrot man ami to a short article about his film in the October 1 965 issue of Cahiers du Cinema. A few weeks later, he devised a few catchphrases for the promotion of his film; one of them characterised Pierrot le Jou as 'Stuart Heisler revised by Raymond Queneau'. As is often the case with Godard, the rather bookish allusions of the young man were to come out again in his mature work, but deeply transformed. A quarter of a century later, another facet of Queneau's work unexpectedly emerged, a reminiscence out of the blue. Some three minutes after the beginning of Chapter 2 B , 'Fa­ tale beaute' ( 1 998), of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98), two successive titles appear, superimposed on the image: THE FATAL MOMENT ALWAYS I ARRIVES TO DISTRACT US (p. 1 70; l 998A, vol. 2 ,

I

L'Instant fatal. Paris: Les Nourritures Terrestres, 1 946.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard pp. l 24-2 5). The intricacy of Histoire(s) has often been commented on, and, not surprisingly, this inscription is connected to a number of other audio-visual events. When these titles appear the film has played upon the word fatal for some time already, around the cen­ tral mantra of this episode, fatale beauti (fatal beauty), which had just appeared, in red on black, to give way to !'instant fatal in green; during this transition, we hear over Godard's typewriter a fragment from the song 'How Am I to Know? ' in Albert Lewin's Pandora and the Flying Dutchman ( 1 9 5 l ) ; and finally, between the two parts of the title about the fateful moment Godard's voice is heard to say: 'there was a short film, the voice-over was JEAN COCTEAu's, it spoke about filmmaking. The voice said: "Red [light] is on. I cheated my way in" ', while we see a fleeting visual quotation from Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete ( 1 946). As usual, Godard's play with words and images is elaborate. From Cocteau's phrase he derives an interrogation on the intrinsic violence of childbirth: 'but when I was born I did I also I cheat my way I through the blood I of my mother' ( 1 998A, vol. 2 , pp. 1 3 0)-a very bizarre meditation on life as some sort of dishonest joke, an im­ posture. The two parts of the 'fatal instant' phrase bracket two brief shots of Cocteau's film (Belle in the empty corridor of the Beast's manor-yet another passage), tightening the weave of the discourse. The natural conclusion of all this is an insistence on birth (and/or life) as fatality, although the overall meaning is not entirely clear. The French word fatal is ambiguous: it may signify something lethal, as in English, but also, in a more neutral way, the idea of fate, of destiny. There is a suggestion of birth as a fateful moment in one's life, and also perhaps a fatal one: indeed, birth is a precondition of death, and death, the necessary conclusion of life . . . The quotation from Queneau is the final verse of the poem 'L'Instant fatal'. In the second edition of the eponymous collection of poems in 1 948, and again in the new edition published in 1 966, this poem is the first of the fourth part (also entitled 'L'Instant fatal') : there is hardly any way to ignore the importance of this title in its author's mind. Moreover, almost all of the thirty poems that com­ pose this fourth part deal with the fateful moment par excellence, that of death. The most famous of all, 'If You Imagine', as sung by a popular Left Bank performer, Juliette Greco, had become a sort of hymn of post-war 'existentialism' : we shall all get old and ugly-

268

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

even you, pretty young girl-and eventually we shall die. Other poems address the figure of death in diverse ways, but deprived of ambiguity: a memento mori. Of course, Godard was perfectly aware of the poem's connection with death, and his simultaneous comment is to be understood as an act of montage: being born is fateful, dying is fatal-and in-between, there is something which symbolises this harsh human destiny of being-for-death. That something is beauty. Fatale beau ti-beauty is fatal because it is barely human, it is 'the beginning of terror' (the famous phrase by Rainer Maria Rilke that Godard so often quoted). Life hurdles us from one fatal moment to the other and it is per­ vaded with the consoling but also threatening consciousness of the higher spiritual world. The question would then be: why should this fateful moment come to distract us-except, perhaps, in the archaic sense of bewilderment? To Queneau, who knew Latin, the answer was obvious: dis-trahere means taking away. Godard lets the word ring with all its agonising ambiguity. In L'lnstantfatal (the 1 948 and 1 966 collection of poems), another piece is called 'Abri du temps', 'A Shelter for Time' . Significantly, this expression is used by Godard (and his co-director Anne-Marie Mieville) in The Old Place: Small Notes Regarding the Arts at Fall of 20th Century ( 1 999) to qualify the art of cinema, inasmuch as it is capable of giving a sacred shelter not only to all films, but to all works of art-to every testimony to the essential human endeavour of living with the perspective of death, and accepting the burden of beauty. Jacques Aumont Raymond Queneau. L'Instant fatal, with Les Ziaux, 1 966. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , 1 998A.

PAT RI C K QU ENTI N The Fate of the Immodest Blonde of Charlotte et "Veronique, OU Taus les gar­ fOns s'appellent Patrick ( 1 959), Charlotte (Anne Colette) appears seated outdoors in the Luxembourg Gardens reading The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, a much different book from the one she had been reading in the first scene, which is set in the apartment she shares with her friend Veronique (Nicole Berger): Claude Khodoss' selected edition of Hegel's Aesthetics ( 1 954). Part of Les Grands Textes, a series of classroom readers published by Presses Universitaires de France, this edition of Hegel indicates that Charlotte is a university student. So is Veronique, who says she is studying law, although the 'law book' she carries is Roger Vailland's steamy novel of power and humiliation, The Law ( 1 9 5 7) . These three books are among numer­ ous cultural references Jean-Luc Godard included within his mise en scene for this short film-books, magazines, movie posters, news­ papers, paintings, pop music. The inclusion of printed texts would become a hallmark of Godard's filmmaking. Charlotte et "Veronique demonstrates that his cinematic use of the printed word has been part of his work since even before he turned to feature filmmaking. The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, whose initial title was Puzzle for Pilgrims, was one in a series of detective novels by the writing duo Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler, whose pseudonym, 'Patrick Quentin', has usurped their real names. Re­ viewing Puzzle for Pilgrims, Elizabeth Bowen called it 'a good Patrick Quentin' (p. l 1 8). Her words suggest that this pen name is akin to a brand name, equating the book with a commercial product that people could trust. A Puzzle for Fools ( 1 9 3 6), the first book in the series, introduced Peter Duluth, a Broadway producer and amateur detective. There followed Puzzles for Players, Puppets, Wantons and Friends. Puzzle for Pilgrims would appear in 1 947, and French, German, Portuguese and Spanish translations followed. When Pocket Books released the paperback edition in 1 950, it gave the work a flashy cover and a provocative title, The Fate of the Immodest Blonde. The Pocket Books edition is the one Charlotte is seen reading in the Luxembourg Gardens.

I

N THE SECOND SCENE

Puzzle for Pilgrims. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 94 7 ·

2 70

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

The Fate of the Immodest Blonde begins at a bullfight in Mexico City. Peter Duluth, who narrates the story, relates his meeting with Sally Haven, the eponymous blonde, who would show up dead the next day. Duluth's wife Iris has fallen for Sally's husband Martin, an English novelist. Peter, in turn, falls for Martin's sister Marietta. As their past emerges, the relationship between Martin and Marietta seems entirely too creepy for a brother and sister. Maurice Lemay found the characters' twisted relationships gave the story a troubled, yet captivating atmosphere (p. 2). Duluth sees Iris, Martin and Ma­ rietta as possible suspects in Sally's apparent murder. The story takes the four of them, along with Jake, a sleazy and scheming private investigator, back and forth across Mexico, as Peter slowly unravels the strange circumstances underlying Sally's death. The Fate of the Immodest Blonde is superior to much post-war pulp fiction. Jeremy Scott associated it with two leading twentieth-century authors, rec­ ognising the influence of Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon ( 1 93 2) and Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point ( 1 9 2 8) (p. 2 9). A novel by Patrick Quentin seems appropriate for a film sub­ titled 'All the Boys are Called Patrick', but this book adds more to the story. It has much in common with other American novels and films that reached France after the Second World War. French readers became fascinated with American detective novels-romans p oliciers-recognising literary qualities that American readers missed. The Fate of the Immodest Blonde also resembles post-war film noir, which often features protagonists who had returned from the war to find their worlds and themselves changed. In previous books in the series, Peter and Iris Duluth had been a happy couple reminiscent of the characters Nick and Nora Charles in Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man ( 1 9 3 4), but the war has distanced them. Peter explains: 'Things had begun to go sour between us in New York. I'd come back from three years in the Pacific war, touchy, restless and impos­ sible to please' (p. r o) . The Fate �fthe Immodest Blonde comes so close to the cinema that Scott called it 'a film script ready for the casting office' (p. 30). The book Charlotte reads in Luxembourg Gardens contrasts sharply with the book she had been reading in the privacy of her apartment. Having heard Natalina Otto's hit song 'Casanova' on the radio before she went out, Charlotte longs for a Casanova of her own. She knows that reading Hegel in public would make her look

PATR I C K Q U E N T I N

too brainy, not a message she wished t o give any young man who might happen to pass. Boys seldom ogle girls who read Hegel. In Godard's preceding film, Une Femme coquette ( 1 95 5), a young woman (Marie Lysandre) attracts a man with just a smile. Charlotte uses the book for bait. By reading The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, she tells potential suitors that she is educated enough to read English, but hip enough to apply her linguistic knowledge to American pulp fiction. The books we read in public tell others who we are. The most prominent words on the cover of Charlotte's paperback-Immodest Blonde-indicate the badge-like quality that books can have. Strik­ ing a pose in an effort to attract a young man, Charlotte creates a public identity for herself. The book also helped Godard create his identity as a filmmaker. He would use crime novels in several sub­ sequent films, from the paperbacks that Angela (Anna Karina) and Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) use in their domestic squabble in Une Femme est une femme ( 1 96 1 ) , to the stack of Serie noire novels on the bedside table in Le Mepris ( 1 96 3 ) to the Serie noire novels that get tossed around a hotel room in Detective ( 1 985). The Fate ofthe Immodest Blonde is the first roman po/icier in the cinema of]ean-Luc Godard. Kevin ]. Hayes Patrick Quentin. The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, l 9 50. -- .

Puzzle au !VIexique, 1 947 ·

Elizabeth Bowen. Elizabeth Bowen's Book Reviews, 1 948. Maurice Lemay. Romans policiers, 1 948. Jeremy Scott. Time to Kill, 1 948.

C HARLES F ERDI NAND RAM U Z A im e Pache, Vaudois Painter

N THE SWISS

Arteplage (AMJ) commissioned Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville to make Liberti et patrie for its exhibition. Accepting the commission, they created a sixteen­ minute motion picture relating the biography of a Vaudois painter named Aime Pache, who was supposedly commissioned by the AMJ to do a large painting for the same exhibition. Godard and Mieville thus created a parallel between filmmaker and painter, creator and subject. The painter's story is, of course, a fiction. There is no painter named Aime Pache, but there is a fictional character of that name who is a painter, the eponymous hero of Charles Ferdinand Ramuz's novel Aime Pache, peintre vaudois, which first appeared serially in La Revue hebdomadaire in 1 9 1 0 and was published separately the follow­ ing year by Fayard in Paris and Payot in Lausanne. Transposing this fictional painter from Ramuz's novel into Liberti et patrie, Godard and Mieville broadened their comparative study of the arts to include literature. Their inclusion of a Beethoven string quartet on the soundtrack extends the parallel to embrace music. Michael Althen captured the film's tone when he observed that with Liberti et patrie the cinema engages in 'a friendly chat with painting, literature, music' (p. 1 02). The use of the prominent Swiss novelist Ramuz creates a bio­ graphical parallel between him and Godard, whose first attempt at a screenplay, at the age of age of eighteen in the summer of 1 949 while living with his parents in Switzerland, was based on Ramuz's first novel, Aline. This tragic though all-too-realistic story about a young woman who is seduced and abandoned Godard once considered adapting. Other works by Ramuz also appealed to Godard. Richard Brody notes that Godard may have been planning a film adaptation of his apocalyptic novel The Signs among Us as early as 1 962 (p. 5 8 1 ) . His interpretation o f that novel would ultimately coalesce a s Chap­ ter 4 B, 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), the final part of Histoire (s) du cinema ( 1 989-98). Ramuz was born in 1 878 in Lausanne, the capital city of the canton of Vaud, to parents from a rural area nearby. As a boy Ramuz

I

2 00 2

Aime Pache, peintre vaudois. La Revue hebdomadaire 40-48 (r October- 2 6 November 1 9 1 0).

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard spent his summers in the Vaud countryside, which he considered his true home. He left Vaud for Paris in 1 902 to start his literary career. The following year he published Le Petit Village, a collection of poems about Swiss peasant life. Ramuz lived in Paris off and on for the next decade, turning his attention from poetry to prose. In addi­ tion to Aline, Ramuz wrote several other novels in Paris, including Aime Pache. After his marriage to Swiss artist Cecile Celli er in 1 9 1 3, the couple settled in Vaud. In 1 9 1 5 Ramuz published War in the High Country, a historical novel set during the Napoleonic wars. That same year he met Igor Stravinsky, who spent the war years living near Lake Geneva. Ramuz would write the libretto for Stravinsky's musical drama A Soldier's Tale ( 1 9 1 8), which Godard quotes in Hilas pour moi ( 1 993). In 1 9 1 9 Ramuz published The Signs among Us. He lived and worked in Vaud the rest of his life, establishing himself as the leading Swiss novelist of his generation. His life follows a pattern similar to that of many Swiss writers and artists, including Godard. Having grown up in Switzerland, Godard relocated to Paris to create his art and make his reputation. Eventually he returned and recon­ nected with his Swiss roots. Aime Pache is a semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman. Ramuz turned the story of his experiences as a writer into the story of a Swiss painter's creative awakening. Pache, Ramuz's alter ego, goes to Paris to learn his art and make his reputation but eventually under­ stands that only by returning home to the land of his ancestors and the place of his birth can he truly achieve artistic fulfilment. Aime Pache reflects the importance of place to Ramuz, whose title charac­ ter possesses a spiritual connection with his village, to which he must return in order to give his life meaning. Given the similarities Godard shared with both Ramuz and his fictional artist, the use of Aime Pache in Liberti et patrie makes good sense. Frederic Bonnaud explains: 'The author invented Pache so that he could pour out his feelings; Godard borrows the novelist's alter ego to continue his own self-portrait' (p. 1 4). Bonnaud's elo­ quent explanation accounts for Godard's use of Aime Pache, but it does not say how he used the novel. Instead of incorporating the book as part of his mise en scene or using its cover as an intertitle, Godard borrows its title character but invents a new biography, making him a contemporary artist. Godard thus replicates Ramuz's

2 74

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

process, using a painter as a stand-in for himself. Godard reinforces the similarity between Aime Pache and Liberti et patrie by dividing the film into chapters, thus giving it a book-like structure. Making Aime Pache a contemporary offered Godard another advantage: he cre­ ated the possibility of depicting the process of painting a picture as part of his motion picture-long an interest of Godard's, stemming from the experiment of Henri-Georges Clouzot filming Picasso at work in The Picasso Mystery ( 1 956). Godard's appropriation of Ramuz's fictional character conveys his cyclical view of history. Ramuz tells the story of his life as the story of a painter named Aime Pache; Godard tells the story of his life as the story of a painter with the same name. A reference to Ramuz's War in the High Country reinforces Godard's cyclical view of history. The fourth chapter of Liberti et patrie incorporates a close-up from the front cover of the Mermod edition of War in the High Country ( 1 9 1 5) followed by a clip from War in the Highlands, Francis Reusser's 1 999 adaptation of Ramuz's novel. The novel presents a version of history; the film presents a version of the novel. Liberti et patrie ultimately becomes much more than a friendly chat: it evolves into a grand statement on the collective nature of artistic endeavour. Once one artist-a poet, painter, filmmaker­ creates a work it becomes fair game for others to appropriate as they see fit. In this regard one thinks of 'The Flower of Coleridge', a Jorge Luis Borges essay included in his collection OTHER INQUI S ITIONS which Godard had used in 'Les Signes parmi nous'. In this essay Borges essentially sanctions plagiarism by denying the entire con­ cept of plagiarism. Art is a communal activity. All artists are engaged in an ongoing process of perfecting art. Doing so they are free to incorporate the art of the past within the art of the present. Liberti et patrie demonstrates the possibilities of using the literature of the past to create forward-thinking cinema. Kevin ]. Hayes Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. Aime Pache, peintre vaudois, r 98 5 . Michael Althen. Liberte e t patrie, 2 006. Frederic Bonnaud. In His New Video Essay Godard Rediscovers the Joy of Being Swiss, 2003 .

P I ERRE REVERDY The Image

of words and images that comprise Jean-Luc Godard's film Passion ( 1 982) includes several snip­ pets of text concerning the creation of art. Spoken in voice­ over, most are extra-diegetic and unattributed. In one scene Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), a character based on S IMONE WEIL, stands in the parking lot where she protests her unjust dismissal from the factory. The scene cuts to a close-up of Jerzy Gerzy Radziwilowicz), Jean­ Luc Godard's alter ego in the film. A voice-over quotation bridges the two shots: 'An image is not powerful because it is brutal or eerie, but because the solidarity between ideas is distant and true'. The close-up captures Jerzy in a moment of contemplation, so the quota­ tion could represent something he is thinking, but it does not seem diegetically motivated. The film does not identify the source of this text, but it comes from 'The Image' (p. 495), a 3 50-word text occu­ pying three pages published by Pierre Reverdy in Nord-Sud in 1 9 1 8 . The text is divided by a blank page and by a full-page image, an untitled pen-and-ink drawing by Georges Braque. Reverdy was born in Narbonne in 1 889 to unwed parents who abandoned him. In 1 90 5 , five years after dropping out of a lycee, he moved to Paris, becoming friends with Picasso and other artists. He published his first book, Poems in Prose, in 1 9 1 5 . Two collections of his verse appeared the following year and, in 1 9 1 7, Reverdy founded Nord-Sud, a semi-monthly review designed to showcase avant-garde writing and promote experimental movements in other arts. Its con­ tributors would include ARAGON and ANDRE B RETON. Speaking with Gavin Smith, Godard called Reverdy 'one of the first dada surreal­ ists, from the time when dada was invented in Zurich' (p. 3 8). Nord­ Sud provided Reverdy a forum for his aestheti c theories, which pro­ foundly influenced modernist art and literature. Godard has called 'The Image' a poem, but it is technically an essay, albeit a lyrical one with the quality of a prose poem. Paul Robichaud called it 'the most important of Reverdy's Nord-Sud essays for modern French poetry' (p. 3 1 9). It had a profound effect on Breton, giving him the theory of the image he developed in his first 'Manifesto of Surrealism' ( 1 9 24). From the early 1 980s, it also profoundly affected Godard's aesthetic.

T

HE COMPLEX COLLAGE

L' I m a ge . Nord-Sud 1 3 ( 1 8 March 1 9 1 8),

3-7 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard It is not known where Godard encountered Reverdy's concept of the image. Nord-Sud ceased publication a year after it began, mark­ ing the end of the most important phase of Reverdy's literary ca­ reer. Reverdy excerpted 'The Image' in The Horsehair Glove, a 1 9 2 7 collection o f aphorisms that included the passage Godard would incorporate in Passion. By his death in 1 960, interest in Reverdy had waned, but his writings began to be reprinted in the late sixties. A collection of Reverdy's aesthetic essays appeared in 1 97 5 as part of his complete works, and a facsimile edition of Nord-Sud in 1 980. After Passion Godard would quote from or paraphrase 'The Image' in several subsequent films: Grandeur et decadence d'un petit commerce de cinema ( 1 986); KING LEAR ( 1 98 712002); Helas pour moi ( 1 993); JLG!JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994); and 'Les Signes parmi nous' ( 1 998), Chapter 4 B of Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98). King Lear represents Godard's fullest usage of 'The Image'. As William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth (Peter Sellars) speaks with Professor Pluggy, the slapstick character Godard himself plays, the profes­ sor uses the word 'image', whereupon Shakespeare Jr. asks him to define the term. In voice-off Pluggy begins to repeat the text of 'The Image'. Without attributing it to Reverdy, Godard essentially ap­ propriates the text as his own. 'The image is a pure creation of the mind', he begins. 'It cannot arise from comparison, only by bringing together two relatively distant realities. The more the connections between the realities thus brought together are distant and true, the more powerful the image will be-the more emotive force and poetic reality it will have' (p. 495). The quotation continues for five more sentences, when it is interrupted by a female voice that recites in voice-over a line from one of the Fool's speeches in King Lear ( 1 608): 'So out went the candle and we were left darkling' ( r .iv. 2 08). This quotation, which is next repeated in a male voice-over, con­ tributes to Reverdy's definition of the image as the juxtaposition of two distant-but-true realities-their rapprochement, suggesting that his text may be one source of Godard's use of the term in later years. This figurative candle from centuries past provides part of a sample image, which other lights in the film-sparkler, light bulb, cigarette lighter, a photocopier's image bar-complete. After the Shakespeare quotation, Pluggy, still in voice-over, resumes the Reverdy quotation with the same sentence Godard had used earlier in Passion and con­ tinues it for several more sentences.

P I E R R E REVE RDY

277

In JLG!JLG Godard would partially repeat the Reverdy quota­ tion. From a close-up of a text inscribed into a school notebook dis­ playing the words 'After the requiem' (a reference to the Gavin Br­ yars album Godard had used on the soundtrack of Allemagne 90 neuf zero: Solitudes, un itat et des variations [ 1 99 1 ]), the film cuts to a shot of Godard seated in a darkened room with his back to the camera. Two video monitors show a series of black-and-white film clips. The same images appear in both monitors simultaneously, which differ in size and sharpness. Godard reads Reverdy's words as he shuffles through the video images (pp. 2 0-2 l ). Before he finishes reading the passage, JLG!JLG cuts to an outdoor shot depicting a snowy landscape. In terms of its use of light and dark, the predominantly white outdoor shot opposes the indoor shot, in which darkness pre­ dominates. The two distant but true images create a set of contrasts: dark/light, indoor/outdoor, man-made/natural. The words 'After the requiem' appear on screen again to close the sequence. 'Les Signes parmi nous' incorporates a clip from this sequence of JLG/JLG and thus repeats Reverdy's words again. Before the voice-over quotation, the shot of the darkened room cuts to one of the images which had appeared on the distant monitors. Now encircled by an iris, the image otherwise fills the frame, appearing long enough to identify two film clips. One is a shot from Marcel Carne's La Marie du Port ( 1 950) depicting the interior of a movie theatre. Godard superimposes a shot from Max Ophiils' The Earrings of Madame de . . . ( l 9 5 3) onto the theatre screen in the shot ( l 998A, vol. 4, pp. 2 5 8-59). Together the two shots create another juxtaposi­ tion that exemplifies Reverdy's theory of the image. The number of times Reverdy's words occur in Godard's work reflects their sig­ nificance to him. Few texts are more important to his work of the 1 980s and 1 990s than 'The Image'. Reverdy's essay provides one of the theoretical frameworks underlying the juxtaposition of images in Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema. Kevin ]. Hayes Pierre Reverdy. L'lmage, 2 0 1 0. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols., 1 998A. ---

. JLG/JLG et azttres textes, 202 2 .

Paul Robichaud. Pierre Reverdy, 2 00 2 . Gavin Smith. Jean-Luc Godard, 1 996.

ART HU R RI M BAU D A Season in Hell writing at the age of twenty­ one. Jean-Luc Godard published his first piece of film criti­ cism when he was nineteen. We should thus not seek any connection between the two in their myths, in their real or imagined personalities. The connection between Godard and Rimbaud is extremely powerful but also very limited. Many Rimbaud references and quotations appear, generally anecdotally, in Godard's films. Be­ yond these occasional winks, Rimbaud is present there in two great ways: through the recurring quotation 'Je est un autre' ('I is someone else'), and in the madly Rimbaudian film Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965). Never named, Rimbaud is everywhere in Pierrot le Jou: quota­ tions of bits and pieces of correspondence, Une Saison en enfer or drafts, but also the mythical Rimbaudian universe. Like Rimbaud ('I will never work'), Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) 'do not want to work' . Marianne's 'brother', Fred (Dirk Sanders), evokes Rimbaud's brother, Frederic. In the end, the film seems more like an adaptation of 'The Drunken Boat' ( 1 8 7 1 ) than it does of Lionel White's Obsession ( 1 962). An insert shows Rimbaud's portrait surrounded by the vowels of his poem 'Vowels' : 0 in blue, U in green and I in red (the black A and white E have been cut out) . This is a Rimbaudian 'oui' to his break with a past world. It is a yes in colours, in a film as colourful, in Technicolor, as Rimbaud's poetry. Most of all, however, what joins these seers is their parallel revo­ lutions in opposition to worn-out forms. In the poem 'Alchemy of the Word' in A Season in Hell, Rimbaud declares: 'for a long time I . . . found laughable the celebrated names of painting and modern poetry. I liked stupid paintings, door panels, stage sets, back-drops for acrobats, signs, popular engravings, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books with bad spelling, novels of our grandmothers, fairy tales . . . ' (p. 2 8 5). In Pierrot, Godard mixes up paintings by great artists (Picasso, Renoir, Monet) with advertising images, neon light­ ing and graffiti; Beethoven with popular song; poetry with crime thrillers; and counting rhymes with comic strips. It is essential to read 'The Drunken Boat', a poem of liberation like the film, alongside Pierrot. Marie-Claire Ropars-Weilleumier

A

RTHUR RIMBAUD STOPPED

Une Saison en enfer. B russels: Alliance typographique, 1 8 7 3 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

2 79

remarks that the naked women in the early party scene, filmed with coloured filters, are like the poem's haulers, ' [nailed] naked to col­ oured stakes' (p. 2 6) . Pierrot/Ferdinand and Marianne escape, roll­ ing straight down the highway. Then they turn around, break the fourth wall and speak to the viewer. She pushes him to go further; Ferdinand hits the gas and the car sails right into the sea: 'Chapter eight I A season in hell I Love [needs] to be reinvented I Real life is [elsewhere] ' (p. 2 8 1 ) . A new chapter begins: the seashore. Marianne doesn't know what to do and starts spouting slogans; worse, she returns to worn-out poetry: 'it's the same price. Uniprix, monoprix. You see, I know how to make alexandrines too' . The alexandrine, the emblem of metered poetry, the kind Rimbaud would shatter. Therein lies the entire rup­ ture: that of the character, the poet, the filmmaker. The film's final shot closes on Rimbaud's 1 87 2 poem 'Eternity' in this dialogue be­ tween Marianne and Ferdinand: 'It has been found again I What has? Eternity I It is the sea gone off I With the sun' (p. 1 8 7). Here Rimbaud's poem is realised. On screen, the sea and the dazzling sun gradually merge in a new-found silence. And yet God­ ard quotes the May 1 8 7 2 version of the poem, not the revised version found in A Season in Hell in 1 8 7 3 : It has been found again ! What has?-Eternity. It is the sea mixed With the sun (p. 2 9 3).

Why did Godard choose this original version, with five syllables per line in the French, and not the unbalanced 5 / 5 / 5 / 3 version? Godard, the innovator who has no fear of jump cuts, of deliberate impedi­ ments to 'cinematic versification', could not have been afraid of the unmusical quality of the later version. It would appear instead that Godard, after the film's chaos, was looking for peaceful lyricism, a more perfect eternity. The original version is more 'poetic' because, apart from the regular rhythm of this 'old-fashioned' aesthetic of harmony, there is above all the sensual image, so fitting for the Fer­ dinand/Marianne couple, which is absent from the revised version. In addition, Godard introduced a novel touch in the way he inserted poetry into cinema; had he used the second version-Rimbaud's de­ liberate massacre of 'old-fashioned poetry'-the 'poetry' might have been less apparent to the viewer and thus this dialogue between the

2 80

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

two art forms, paradoxically, less innovative. Old-fashioned poems become new ideas in cinema. Rimbaud's other great presence in Godard, well beyond Pierrot le Jou, is his famous phrase 'Je est un autre', found in his so-called seer's letter to Paul Demeny in l 8 7 l : 'I is someone else. If brass wakes up a trumpet, it's not its fault' (p. 3 7 5). Like all Rimbaud, this phrase has been interpreted, over-interpreted, repeated, stolen, twisted. In Godard, it would become a recurring quotation, even as, in real life, Godard virtually never mentions Rimbaud's name. 'Je est un autre' is not quoted in Pierrot le Jou, but it infuses the entire theme of the network of quotations around the dual man in the film. The alterity of the I is a theme that runs through Godard's entire oeuvre. We find 'Je est un autre' in Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( 1 962) but also on an intertitle in Nouvelle Vague ( 1 990), an­ other film on dual men, this time built around the figure of Amphit­ ryon. Godard, that dual being who, before separating the viewer's vision using 3 D in Adieu au langage (20 1 4) (a very Rimbaudian title in a sense), cut himself in two by means of a slash in his self-portrait film, JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994). On the topic of this film he once said: 'all of a sudden you realise you're someone else. So if I is someone else, what is I? And who is this other ? ' (p. 2 9). After Pierrot le Jou Rimbaud's idea, more than his aesthetic, came to inhabit Godard's work, as if he had digested the rupture with the old world and its old-fashioned ideas in order to set out for new poetic lands. Astonishingly, Godard, who is so frequently a seer, appears to be completely ignorant of contemporary revolutions in poetry, from Bernard Heidseck's action-poetry to the sound-poetry, descended from the Lettrists, of Franc;ois Dufrene, Brion Gysin and Rene Chopin. It is as if, for Godard, creation and rupture have always been connected with figures such as Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme and Lautreamont. These revolutions he assimilates and admires, whilst being unaware of those of his contemporaries-insufficiently 'a la mode' to his eyes and ears, perhaps, to be 'modern'. Julien d'Abrigeon Arthur Rimbaud. A Season in Hell, 2 005 .

. Poesies/Une Saison en enfer!llluminations, 1 999· Jean-Luc Godard. Comme un poisson clans l'eau, 1 990. ---

Marie-Claire Ropars-Weilleumier. La Forme et le fond, 1 967.

J AC QU ES RI VET TE The Hand who made up the future Nou­ velle Vague, Jacques Rivette was seen by Jean-Luc Godard as the 'best theorist' whose trenchant yet poetic opinions he followed in a somewhat 'Stalinist' manner ( 1 998Q, pp. 9, r o) . And much as FRAN , 2 0 1 9.

,

ERI C ROHM ER O n Three Films and a C ertain S c hoo l Jean-Luc Godard's senior and writing under his real name, Maurice Scherer, Eric Rohmer began his career as a film critic in 1 948 with 'Cinema, the Art of Space'-his enduring aesthetic interest-in the short-lived La Revue du Cinema, the most high-brow of France's post-war film journals. Rohmer also founded an ephemeral little magazine called La Gazette du cinema in 1 950, where Godard published his first piece of film criticism. As Godard later remarked and as articles such as 'The Art of Space' make clear, Rohmer was the ' deepest' of the critics who , before becoming the 'Young Turks', were known at Cahiers du Cinema as the 'Scherer gang'. Indeed if the young Godard had an elder mentor, it was Rohmer, not ANDRE BAZIN. Already in 'The Art of Space' can be found a hint of things to come in the Gazette and Cahiers. Alongside erudite references to high­ brow European culture, Rohmer praises Alfred Hitchcock, long before he attained the status of film auteur thanks, precisely, to the Young Turks at Cahiers. There he would be at the centre of the journal 's critical polemics . In the pages of Cahiers the writings of Rohmer and his gang also saw a move away from the style of the Revue: the Young Turks' articles were shorter and often spoke in the first person and addressed the reader directly. The focus on popular Hollywood cinema intensified, even as there remained, in Rohmer and Godard, erudite references to literature and the other arts. The 'politique des auteurs', the brash and subjective 'authorship doctrine' intellectually validating B-grade Hollywood filmmakers, had taken hold. Strangely, no one in the group attempted a programmatic argu­ ment for the politique. In 1 95 6 Rohmer remarked that F RAN , 1 99 2 . Jean-Luc Godard. L'Art a partir d e l a vie, l 998Q.

. Histoire (s) du cinema: Godard fait des histoires ( 1 989), l 998T. E ric Rohmer. Le Celluloid et le Marbre ( 1 9 5 5), 2 0 1 0.

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---

. Les Lecteurs des Cahiers et la politique des auteurs, 1 956.

ROBERT O ROS S ELL I N I Interview is ubiquitous in Jean-Luc Godar d's discussions of the cinema, and references to the neo-realist master can be found throughout his films. The two met for the first time in the 1 950s, when Rossellini was based in Paris and involved in a failed attempt to bring the Cahiers du Cinema critics together to work on a series of short films, and interacted most sub­ stantially in the early 1 960s, when Godard made a film, Les Carabiniers ( 1 963), based on Rossellini's adaptation of Beniamino Joppolo's play I carabinieri. Godard's debt to Rossellini extends beyond the latter's films: the interviews that Rossellini conducted with Cahiers du Cinema in the 1 950s and 6os, and to a lesser extent the Italian director's three­ part essay 'Ten Years of Cinema', published by Cahiers in 1 9 5 5-56, constitute something like a point of origin for several of the key questions about cinema which would concern Godard throughout the rest of his career (Rossellini's lengthier writings on film would not appear in print until the 1 970s) . The two interrelated questions discussed in these interviews that relate most closely to Godard's concerns are first, how cinema can allow the 'real' to speak for itself, and second, how image relates to idea. We can see Godard's engage­ ment with both of these questions in a fabricated 'interview' with Rossellini he published in Arts in April 1 959, the same month that Cahiers published an interview with Rossellini which Godard seems to draw upon. The extent to which Godard's fake interview is able to mimic Rossellini 's ideas and voice convincingly goes beyond mere plagiarism or dissimulation, representing something more like an internalisation and appropriation of his discourse. Rossellini remarks in the 1 9 5 9 interview that 'things are there . . . why manipulate them? ' ( 1 98 5 , p. 2 l 2 ) and explains that he sought in India '58 to present 'real events which I have filmed such as they were. There is no moral to be drawn out of them' ( 1 99 5 , p. ro3). Godard echoes this idea in his fake interview, writing that 'One must get to that extreme point where things speak for themselves' ( 1 998G, p. l 88). The question that immediately emerges here, however, is

R

OBERTO ROSSELLINI

Entretien avec Roberto Rossellini . Cahiers du Cinema 94 (April 1 9 5 9), l - l I .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard what role subjectivity plays in this process. Rossellini remarks in the same Cahiers interview that he is most interested in people, and that it is only through their presence that things gain meaning: 'the things that surround [an individual] have a meaning, since there is someone who's looking at them, or, in the least, their meaning is unique by virtue of the fact that there is someone looking at them' (p. r n8). He thus poses one of the problems that would preoccupy Godard several years later, beginning with Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle ( 1 967), a film he explicitly compares to Rossellini's Europa '51 (20 1 4, p. 3 2 6): how can one see the world in a way that it yields up some truth about itself while at the same time acknowledging the impossibility of see­ ing it from anything other than the position of one's own subjectiv­ ity? Rossellini would insist on this impossibility in a 1 963 interview with Cahiers in which he criticises cinema verite ( 1 995c, p. 1 4 1 ) . This question relates closely to that o f how idea and image relate: in another passage from the 1 959 interview that Godard seizes upon, Rossellini notes that 'what matters is ideas, not images, if you have very clear ideas in your head you will find the most direct images to express them' ( 1 98 5 , p. r n7). Godard's fake interview reformulates this proposition as 'it is enough to have clear ideas. The image fol­ lows automatically' ( 1 998G, p. 1 88). While the later Godard, who sees the cinematic idea as something that is borne out of the juxta­ position of two images, might disag�ee with the statement, he takes from Rossellini the conviction that cinema produces ideas, not sim­ ply images, and that these ideas must result not from a projection or imposition of the self upon the world, but rather a commitment to uncovering the real. Godard thus takes from Rossellini's Cahiers interviews not only ideas which would form the basis of some of his later theoretical interrogations of the image, but also strong convictions about the purpose of cinema. For Godard, the cinema is not so much a means for the expression or exploration of personal fantasy as it is a way to know the world, an idea that few besides Rossellini were champion­ ing in the late 1 950s and early 1 960s. By the early 6os, Rossellini had begun to lay the groundwork for the pedagogical television films that would represent the bulk of his output until his death in 1 97 7 ; the importance of didacticism, which he deems 'absolutely necessary', is also a key topic in the Cahiers interviews ( 1 995B, p. 1 2 9). Speak­ ing of this precise period, Godard notes that 'Roberto had a fairly

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard didactic style that I quite liked at the time', and that he was drawn to Rossellini's 'somewhat scientific logic' (z o 1 4, pp. 3 90 and 393). Al­ though the idea might have been drawn from a number of different sources, he also frequently compares the camera to a microscope, an idea introduced by Rossellini in his 1 95 5 article 'Ten Years of Cinema' ( 1 995A, p. 66). We see a tendency towards such quasi-scientific dis­ course and a Rossellinian didacticism in Godard's mid- 1 96os films, and although it changes shape as the years pass, it continues to be palpable in much of the work that follows. Rossellini's concern with logic and the search for knowledge led Godard to dub him, in a 1 959 review of India '58, 'more Socratic than Socrates', and Godard will later identify himself and his method with Socrates, almost as though metonymically referring to his Ital­ ian master: 'one shot after the other, that's Socrates' ( 1 998H, p. 1 99; 1 9980, p. 4 1 1 ) . But everyone knows what happened to Socrates, and here lies the more pessimistic side of the bond between Rossellini and Godard: in his 1 962 interview, the former was already insistent that cinema had failed at its task to connect us with the real and was instead the 'most responsible' of all the arts for the 'enormous pro­ cess of indoctrination and stupefaction that has been going on' (p. 1 2 8). Godard would make his most definitive statement about this failure in his Histoire(s) du cinema ( 1 989-98) over twenty years later, but as he wrote in 1 959, 'Rossellini has already left the place where others will not arrive for another twenty years' ( 1 998H, p. 1 99). Michael Cramer Fereydoun Hoveyda & Jacques Rivette. Interview with Roberto Rossellini,

1 98 5 . Roberto Rossellini. Interview with Fereydoun Hoveyda and Jacques Rivette,

1 99 5 · --- . Entretien avec Fereydoun Hoveyda e t Jacques Rivette, 2 006. Jean-Luc Godard. Un Cineaste c'est aussi un missionnaire ( 1 9 59), l 998G. --

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. India ( 1 959), l 998H. . La Chance de repartir pour un tour ( 1 980), 1 9980.

. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, 2 0 1 4.

Roberto Rossellini. Ten Years of Cinema < 1 95 5>, l 995A. . Interview with Jean Domarchi, Jean Douchet and Fereydoun Hoveyda < 1 962>, l 995B.

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. Interview with Fereydoun Hoveyda and Eric Rohmer < 1 96p,

1 995C.

M ARC EL S AC OT TE Prostitution

ARCEL SACOTTE's

La Prostitution was the third volume on est series of easily digestible paperbacks published in the late 1 950s and early 1 960s. Edited by Jacques Calmy, the series aimed to enlighten the general public by explaining in broad sociological terms modern phenomena such as 'The Automobile', 'The Army', 'Pedagogy' and 'Nuclear Sci­ ence' . Unsurprisingly, due to its salacious subject matter, Sacotte's book proved highly successful. It was translated into Spanish in 1 964, a revised French edition was published in 1 96 5 , and a 'deluxe' edition was included in Flemish publisher Walter Beckers' Collection du XXe Siecle in 1 970. In 1 97 1 Sacotte returned to Buchet/Chastel to publish the more comprehensive Prostitution: What Can Be Done? Problems of Today and Tomorrow. Sacotte became a lawyer in Marseille at nineteen but had to wait to enter the judiciary until he turned twenty-one, the age of majority, in 1 9 3 3 · After the Second World War he was appointed an examining magistrate and moved to Paris to continue his practice. Renowned for his knowledge of the subject, Sacotte had, at the time of publication, presided over more than two thousand cases deal­ ing with prostitution in one manner or another. His book reflects the acumen required of a man in his position, taking for the most part a decidedly didactic approach. Nevertheless, expertise garnered via anecdotal rather than scholarly evidence leads Sacotte towards speculative psycho-social and psycho-sexual diagnoses of those he sees fated to become prostitutes, claiming 'the fundamental basis of their temperament and psychology' is a certain form of 'mental deficiency' (p. 2 3). With its mixture of documentary evidence and pulp-fiction pru­ rience, it is no wonder thatJean-Luc Godard became fascinated with the book, which almost resembles a period photo-novel. In fact he takes a similar approach in Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux ( l 962 ). Directly inspired by Sacotte's work, Godard explores in tableau structure the day-to-day life of Nana (Anna Karina), a woman who, after losing her job at a record shop, turns to prostitution to make ends meet. Godard utilises the more clinical aspects of Sacotte's

M

in Buchet/Chastel's Ou

La Prostitution. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1 959.

2 94

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

reportage as shorthand for Nana's rapid acclimation to the world of prostitution. Direct quotation is Godard's primary method here; Sacotte is only credited with providing 'documents' in the film's opening titles, nothing more. The book itself is not even mentioned, only the publisher and year of publication. These 'documents' are most evident in tableau eight, as Nana in voice-over interrogates her pimp Raoul on the technical aspects of the trade: 'What do I do? ' ; 'Do I have t o register? ' ; 'What do I charge? ' The answers are an inventory of legal, moral and quotidian aspects of prostitution, each either a direct or a paraphrased quotation taken from various passages throughout Prostitution, delivered in rapid monotone voice-over to emphasise their evidentiary nature. Other examples include the lettre classique of the initiate, which Nana writes in tableau seven, patterned from a photograph on page 1 07 of the first edition (the photographs were removed for the later 1 965 edition), as well as Raoul's ledger of accounts which Nana peeks into near the conclusion of tableau six, which is modelled on the photograph on page 88. While these quotations give the narrative an air of authenticity, the more seductive aspects of Prostitution are reflected in Godard's style. In tableau eight Godard offers a collage of fragmented bodies, each hinting at something much more sordid and salacious than its voice-over catalogue of official rules and regulations suggests: hands exchanging money; high heels pausing to turn on carpeted stairs; a hand locking a door; Nana's face in profile resting uncomfortably on a pillow; a hand caressing Nana's bare shoulder from behind. Simi­ larly fragmented images are scattered throughout Sacotte's book, epitomised by its trashy cover photo of a 'streetwalker' shown from the waist down only, her purse dangling from her hand, one leg bent slightly in a 'come hither' pose, with only a man's arm and leg in the background to suggest an approaching encounter. Its more lascivious elements aside, Vivre sa vie in fact marks the beginning of Godard's career-long use of prostitution as a metaphor for exploring the personal and, increasingly as his work progresses, the political boundaries of the self. While the film is certainly politi­ cal in form, with its unmistakable nods to B E RTOLT B RECHT 'S meth­ ods of alienation, it does not yet approach Godard's near disavowal of individuality during his turn to the writings of MAO ZEDONG in the mid- 1 96os. Indeed, Godard's use of prostitution in, for example, Deux ou trois choses queje sais d'elle ( 1 967), is much more in line with

295

MAR C E L SAC OTTE

that era's revolutionary slogan 'the personal is political'. In that film, the main character Juliette's turn to prostitution is not a reflection of individual responsibility but a collective metaphor for the dimin­ ishing importance of individuality and the inevitability of alienated labour in the marketplace of late capitalism. With Vivre sa vie, however, Godard remains decidedly existen­ tial in his conception of individuality and of personal responsibility. Herein lies the main point of contention between Sacotte's work and Godard's. Godard adapts a quotation from Michel de Montaigne's ES SAYS as an epigraph to the film ('we must lend ourselves to oth­ ers, and give ourselves only to ourselves' [p. 767]) to illustrate his goal of finding a 'self' which is Nana's alone. We discover this early on, during a scene in which Nana's ex-boyfriend tells a seemingly offhand anecdote about the soul remaining after both the outside (i.e., the body) and the inside (i.e., the mind) are stripped away. As the story begins, a well-timed camera movement comes to rest ex­ clusively on Nana, suggesting that the film is really about Godard's attempt to strip away the layers of psychology and morality inherent in Sacotte's account of prostitution in order to reveal Nana as her­ self. There is no psychologism here, nor is there any overt metaphor calling for wider socio-political analysis. Godard is not interested in exploring underlying reasons why Nana has turned to prostitution but simply in showing that she has. Indeed, in tableau seven Nana confirms this by acknowledging that she alone is responsible for her actions and thus for her individuation. 'I forget I'm responsible', she admits, 'but I am'. This basic existential premise grounds her actions throughout the film. Even as she is gunned down at the end, Godard gives us no sense of blame, judgement or punishment, but simply recounts the final moments of a life which was Nana's alone to live. With Vivre sa vie, Godard is ultimately after something deeper than the sordid drudgery of the profession implied by Sacotte's Prostitution. Sacotte's influence is undeniable, but there remains a fundamental difference between his work and Godard's. Where Sacotte sees predisposition, Godard finds choice. Where Sacotte sees mental and moral deficiency, Godard finds self-responsibility. In the end, Sacotte seeks essence; Godard instead captures existence. Glen W Norton Marcel Sacotte. La Prostitution, 1 96 5 . Michel d e Montaigne. The Complete Essays ofMontaigne, 2 0 1 +

J EAN- PAU L S ARTRE Nausea aesthetic theory, criticism, political interventions and literary production (novels, short stories, plays, memoirs, even film scripts), the Protean nature of Jean-Paul Sartre's oeuvre-not to mention the global fame he had garnered in the post-war era-has not prevented his descent into relative neglect within contemporary academia. It is perhaps for this reason that in the voluminous literature on Jean-Luc Godard's artistic and intellectual influences, Sartre's name is generally conspicuous in its absence. This is despite the fact that, as Richard Brody has painstakingly outlined, Godard's youth was marked by a prolonged obsession with the image of the public intellectual carved out by Sartre, which served as a model for his own media presence from the 1 960s onwards. References to the philosopher, moreover, are sprin­ kled throughout Godard's films, from early titles such as Le Petit Soldat ( 1 960/63) up to 2 0 r os releases such as Film Socialisme ( z o r o) . In many cases, these references were to the blend of phenom­ enology and existentialism that was the hallmark of Sartrean phi­ losophy, as elucidated in texts such as Being and Nothingness ( 1 943), The Imaginary ( 1 940) and the lecture Existentialism is a Humanism (1 946) . Disquisitional cameos in Godard's films by intellectuals such as Brice Parain and Francis Jeanson solidified the link to this in­ tellectual tradition. As the filmmaker politically radicalised in the direction of the militant Left, he also found occasion to engage in more direct polemics with Sartre, both within and outside of his films, despite the philosopher's own increasing proximity to the left­ ist movement. In La Chinoise ( 1 967), Jean-Pierre Leaud methodically erases the names of a pantheon of artists on a blackboard until only BERTOLT B RECHT remains-significantly, Sartre's was the first name to be wiped off the slate. Later, during his period of MAO I ST engage­ ment, Godard issued a more theorised riposte to the philosopher, stating in an interview that Sartre was failing to do 'the work of an intellectual revolutionary in a revolutionary manner' ( 1 998B, p. 3 74). But it was Sartre's literary output, and particularly his first novel, La Nausee, that exerted a profound effect on Godard's films. A work with indisputable autobiographical elements, Nausea takes the form

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La Nausee. Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 3 8 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

297

of diaristic entries by Antoine de Roquentin, a solitary young man living in the fictitious port town of Bouville in the early 1 9 30s. The meagre family inheritance Antoine subsists on gives him a measure of financial independence, but also leaves him adrift. Trips to the library to pursue a self-imposed research project into the eighteenth­ century man of action Monsieur de Rollebon fill up Antoine's days, but he finds himself prone to bouts of an existential malady that he dubs 'nausea'. In these spells, it is not Antoine who is ill, but the world around him which becomes sickened, loses it solidity, swirls into meaninglessness and chaos. Causality seems to dissolve, adjec­ tives are sundered from their nouns, everything around Antoine becomes increasingly absurd, superfluous. In an effort to arrest this plunge into an existential abyss, Antoine resolves to move to Paris and reconnect with his old paramour Anny, a histrionic, flamboy­ ant actress from England who is one of the few people with whom Antoine has experienced a sense of human connection. Their rendez­ vous in her hotel room is one of the novel's most extraordinary pas­ sages. For twenty-five pages, the two characters, reuniting after sev­ eral years apart, parry with each other, vacillating from despondency to excitation, from annoyance at each other to a rekindling of the affection they once had. Their discussion, with introspective pro­ nouncements issued on both sides, is punctuated by movement and action: Anny ruffles her former lover's hair, moves about the room, and twice disappears into the bathroom. While Antoine tries to tell her about his transformative experiences, Anny shows little interest in them, having herself succumbed to a kind of complacent ennui. Eventually, she cuts him off for another appointment with a German painter, and announces that she is leaving for London the following day. Crestfallen, Antoine returns despondently to Bouville. In a rapturous review of Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika ( 1 95 3), Godard likened the film to the 'sordid pessimism' of Nausea ( 1 986H, p. 84). Later, he recognised his youthful infatuation with Sartre's writing: 'I wanted to read everything. I wanted to know every­ thing. Existentialism was at its peak at that time. Through Sartre I discovered literature, and he led me to everything else' (1 964, p. 42). Speaking with Marguerite Duras, Godard even came to Sartre's defence against her strident attacks and reminisced about him as 'someone I would bump into in cafes, smoking his cigarettes . . . and then one fine day I learned he had written Nausea' (p. I I 1 ) .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard If, like Sartre, Godard has frequently seen fit to inject his fic­ tions with philosophical elements, Nausea has also exerted its influ­ ences on the narrative construction of Godard's films. In several of his early releases-most notably A bout de souffie ( 1 960) and Le Me­ pris ( 1 963)-the flow of the storyline is interrupted by prolonged sequences featuring two romantically-linked characters holed up in a room together, probing their feelings for each other amidst sprawl­ ing discussions about life, art and love. If these scenes have a literary precursor, then it can assuredly be found in Sartre's first novel. The dynamic of these sequences, their role within the films' broader nar­ rative and their combination of dialogue and movement within an almost claustrophobically confined spatial setting all hark back to Antoine's encounter with Anny in Nausea. While Godard's relation­ ship to the literary works he avidly consumed often manifested itself in quotations or overt references, it can in this case also be detected on a deeper, perhaps more unconscious level, in how he conceived of their very narrative structure. His relationship with Nausea nonetheless does, in the end, find a more overt expression many decades later. In 2 0 1 0, in Film Social­ isme, a particularly piquant nod to Sartre surfaces. The protagonist of Nausea regularly, but ineffectually, assails the 'bastards' around him who are self-contented, provincial, vacuous and irredeemably bourgeois. In Film Socialisme, Godard provides an updated vision. A character states in the film: 'What doesn't change is that there will always be bastards. But what does change is that, today, the bastards are sincere' (p. 59). Asked about the line, Godard admits openly to its provenance: 'It's a phrase that came to me when reading some passages from Nausea. At that time, the bastard was not sincere. A torturer knew he wasn't honest. Today, the bastard is honest' (2 0 1 0B). Daniel Fairfax Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea, 2 0 1 0. ---

. La Nausee, 1 989.

Richard Brody. Everything is Cinema, 2 008. Jean Clay. Jean-Luc Godard < 1 96p, 1 964. Marguerite Duras & Jean-Luc Godard. Dialogues, 2 0 1 4. Jean-Luc Godard. Summer with Monika < 1 958>, 1 9861-I. ---

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. Le droit d'auteur? Un auteur n'a que des devoirs, 2 0 1 0B.

. Film Socialisme, 2 0 1 00.

Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin. Pourquoi tout va bien? ( 1 972), l 998B.

WI LLI AM S HAK E S P E ARE King Lear

N WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S

play, King Lear mistakenly assumes that 'nothing will come of nothi ng' ( i .i.90) . In the post Cher­ nobyl wasteland of Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear ( 1 987/zoo2), we understand that something can be made from nothing but fear that this something does not include everything-or, in any event, enough. Regeneration, a concept at the heart of Shakespeare's King Lear, seems to have worked its magic for movie contracts, stars, 'names' and, of course, for gangsters, corporations, authority and obedience. But where does this leave art? William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth, played by controversial artist and director Peter Sellars, wanders through this film searching for the art of his great ancestor. Shakespeare's art, like all other expressions of culture and meaning, has been lost to Godard's wasteland and requires regeneration. On his journey, Sellars misses Norman Mailer ('the Great Writer') and his daughter Kate before they leave France for America. He does, however, encounter the Lear-like incarnation of Mailer's script, Don Learo (Burgess Meredith) and his daughter Cordelia (Molly Ring­ wald), as well as Professor Pluggy (Godard) and a cast of sprightly characters buzzing around in this Lear universe of the mind. Antici­ pating Peter Greenaway's highly subj ective Prospero 's Books ( 1 99 1 ), this King Lear is most useful and satisfying when understood as a work of cultural regeneration. Like Shakespeare's King Lear and its journey from ignorance to understanding, Godard's film takes us through a disconcerting landscape to reach its own re-creation of art. Godard's Lear concerns the regeneration of film and filmmaker. Serving, in Lear's words, 'the thing itself', it is a film about film­ making, which begins with the art-sceptic anxieties of the Cannon Group producer, voiced over the opening titles, insisting that the long-awaited film be ready for Cannes. The Cannon name and pres­ tige, we hear, are at stake. The action then opens on Mailer work­ ing on the script and saying, 'Mailer. Oh yes. That is a good way to begin' . Godard's voice-over quickly intervenes with a reflection on his 1 986 contract with Norman Mailer and daughter Kate. Godard

I

William Shakspeare: His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. London: for Nathaniel Butter, 1 608.

3 00

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

speaks of the implied failure of the contract in the inadequacy of words and in the face of 'gentle reality', between which there is 'no thing' . The business of filmmaking, J essica Maerz notes, is thus made manifest and paramount (pp. 1 08-9). After Godard's Chernobyl, the prospects for film as corporate product are one thing; the prospects for this film and the cinema of culture and meaning are another. The filmmaking business offers an array of alternative models. Contracts and corporations, stubborn in nature, cannot shed asso­ ciation with creative practice. The names of the Cannon Group and Mailer might be good ways to begin, Woody Allen a good way to end, but they are not the only ways to begin and end. If, as Mailer asserts, 'the mafia is the only way to do King Lear', he reveals himself to be as deluded as Lear himself when he tells Cordelia that 'nothing will come of nothing' . As Stig Bjorkman remarks, Norman Mailer, like Woody Allen, has no proper or substantial role here (p. 6). The work of making this film and, above all, its agenda of creative reflec­ tion, continues largely without them. Mailer's rhetoric of gangster-genre essentialism in Lear-making seems better suited to a different type of film, as Godard's intertitles throughout the film clarify. This Lear is not a tightly labelled and packaged genre film but A STUDY, AN APPROACH, A CLEAR­ ING, A JOURNEY INTO, and, most L ear-like, NO THING. It is an attempt to understand the ideas surrounding the King Lear cul­ tural myth and Shakespeare's text in a heuristic and experiential way. It works just as Shakespeare's Lear and Edgar themselves attempt it, from the basis of having lost or divested oneself of almost every­ thing. It is, therefore, also an attempt to regenerate cinema as a form of culture and meaning similarly. As the present author has argued else­ where, the film engages with Shakespeare's King Lear because both works understand the creative potential of divestment, emotional storm and tempest, what can be done 'when the mind's free' (p. 3). The product of this free mind is the film's free association of voices, quotations, ideas, images, actors and scenes of performance art central to any analysis of Godard's work. The film catalogues a multitude of sounds and images pertinent to any genuine crea­ tive engagement with Shakespeare's King Lear. These are best read through the medium of any performer who submits him- or herself to the role of Edgar. In this context, Leos Carax, who plays Edgar in Godard's film, seems as slight as any of the sprites in the film.

W I L L IA M S HA K E S P EA R E

301

Shakespeare's Edgar, carrying around a crowded group of person­ alities, roles and alter egos, as well as a head full of diverse voices, sounds and speeches, does not require particular representation in Godard's film. Shakespeare's Edgar and his 'alters' permeate every part of the film and the audience's reception of it. Sellars recreating and regurgitating half phrases and titles-'As you wish . . . As you which [witch?] . . . As you watch . . . As You Like It'-stand for the painstaking relearning of this language of culture that has been al­ most reduced to nothing. The voice-overs of many protagonists and non-protagonists punctuate the action with lines and passages from the play as well as from other literary works. Disordered and recon­ figured like the Shakespearean collages and adaptations of the critic and director Charles Marowitz in his book The Marowitz Shakespeare ( 1 978), these punctuations remind us of the beauty and insight of the whole that has been occluded, potentially to return only in chaotic fits and starts. Discussion, discourses and oral quotations from films and philosophies play a similar role. Images of paintings, photo­ graphic stills of celebrated male filmmakers, literary texts and avant­ garde performances in wintery landscapes are the visual form of the dreams and waking visions of Godard's Lear-bedazzled mind. High school students are always pedantically corrected when they refer to Shakespeare's texts as 'the book' . With Godard's Lear we have moved as far from the book as can be imagined. Like the vanishing perspectives of the paintbox images that Peter Greenaway uses for Prospero's volumes, in Godard's Shakespeare the director provides the template for a pre-tablet moving, sounding and think­ ing 'beyond-book' that lies both at the heart of Shakespeare's art and at the heart of visual and performing art itself. Mark Nicholls William Shakespeare. King Lear, 1 99 7 · --

. Le Roi Lear, 2 0 1 4.

Stig Bjorkman. Woody Allen on Woody Allen, 1 99 5 · Jessica M. Maerz. Godard's King Lear, 2 004. Mark Nicholls. From Divestment to Due Resolution, 2 0 1 3 .

C LAU DE E. S HANNON The Mathematical Theory of Communication created the field of information theory and, in so doing, proposed theorems which remain pro­ foundly important to the computer and telecommunications industry today. After taking a Ph.D. at MIT, Shannon went to work for Bell Laboratories, where he devised the concepts he published in the Bell System Technical Journal in 1 948 as 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' and republished the following year in book form with a slight change of title and an accompanying article by Wil­ liam Weaver. Basically, Shannon sought to quantify a message's in­ formation to make the study of information flow subject to precise mathematical treatment. Essential to his theory is the idea of a 'bit' of information, a concept that offers the simplest way to indicate Shannon's lasting contribution to information theory: he invented the term. Practically speaking, his discovery let him embed one tele­ phone conversation within the intermittent silences of another. Although it takes specialised knowledge to follow Shannon's mathematics, he began with a fairly simple schematic of a general communication system. An information source selects a message to communicate; a transmitter then encodes the message into a signal, which is sent over a channel to a receiver; this, in turn, decodes the signal into a message and hands it to its destination. Shannon's mod­ el applies to all forms of communication, from the simplest physical gesture to the most sophisticated digital telecommunication system. There is one more component of this general communication sys­ tem: noise. As the signal is transmitted through the channel, it can be affected by noise, defined broadly as anything that distorts, deforms or otherwise affects the signal during the transmission process. Having devised a way to quantify information, Shannon could then determine the probability of a signal becoming distorted by noise and create mathematical formulae to show how communica­ tion systems could achieve peak efficiency by maximising the number of individual signals while minimising the likelihood of distortion. For leaders in the telecommunications industry currently designing and implementing commercial terabit systems, Shannon's math-

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A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal 2 7 CTuly 1 948), 3 79-42 3 .

Reading with Jean -Luc Godard

3°3

ematics retains much practical value. But as the present author has pointed out elsewhere, for Jean-Luc Godard, the industrial and technological uses of Shannon's theorems are less important than their political, social and aesthetic ramifications (p. 74). Godard was not the only one to recognise the imaginative po­ tential of Shannon's ideas. In 'Entropy' ( 1 960), Thomas Pynchon has two characters argue over communication theory. One says that the word 'love' in the phrase 'I love you' is problematic because it creates noise, observing: 'Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorgani­ sation in the circuit' (p. 2 85). Godard also started using Shannon's ideas in the l 96os. His incorporation of distracting noise-such as the loud walkie-talkie static in Pierrot le Jou ( 1 965)-tests an audi­ ence's ability to receive a message despite the noise that distorts its signal. Godard's occasional use of overlapping soundtracks, while aesthetically indebted to Howard Hawks' newsroom drama His Girl Friday ( 1 940), also reflects Shannon's thought. Godard has frequent­ ly tested movie-goers' tolerance for noise. To what extent can we endure extraneous noise yet still receive the filmmaker's intended message? Godard may have exceeded the limits with Un Film comme les autres ( 1 968), with its two simultaneous competing voice tracks. This film's virtually incomprehensible soundtrack left audiences flabbergasted, forcing many to seek the exits before the second reel. Godard acknowledged his debt to Shannon in the early 1 970s, describing to an interviewer Shannon's schematic of a general com­ munication system and elaborating upon the idea of noise within the communication process: 'For us as moviemakers the noise is not merely something technical, it's something social' ( 1 9 7 3 , p. l 3 2). Godard reiterated this idea in Comment fa va ( 1 976, with Anne-Marie Mieville). In one scene, Odette (Mieville) and a nameless newspaper­ man (uncredited) watch some video footage of him working in the newsroom. The video depicts the newspaperman working with his back to the camera but often turning his head to look over his right shoulder. Odette asks why he keeps turning his head. He tells her that a little noise had distracted him, nothing more. She becomes upset with his dismissive attitude towards noise and stresses its importance to information. To illustrate, she implies that when Vietnam made some noise, it caused heads to turn. To the newspaperman, noise is an incidental thing, a temporary distraction; for Odette-Godard's mouthpiece-noise is an inherent part of the communication process.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Later in Comment fa va, Godard incorporates a direct reference to Shannon which reiterates the social relevance of his mathematical theory of communication. Narrating the story in voice-over as a letter to his son, the man explains that Odette had criticised his inability to read between the lines, alluding to the practical implications of Shan­ non's theory to prove her point. He remarks that Odette told him how telephone companies could situate a telephone signal within the silences of another. Writing to his son, he expresses another one of her ideas: 'Instead of tiring yourself shouting "Death to fascism" for fifty years, you would have done better to shout Shannon's theorems' . Mentioning Shannon by name i n Comment fa va, Godard makes his theoretical framework explicit. The various acts of communica­ tion depicted in the film can be understood in relation to Shannon's concept of noise. As Odette and the newspaperman discuss the revo­ lutionary events in Portugal and how their paper has reported them, she echoes Shannon's schematic, explaining that Portugal goes into the machine but also comes out. The message about what happened in Portugal can be distorted by the noise it encounters as it passes through the communication system or, more precisely, through a series of communication systems, each offering its own kind of noise. Shannon's communication theory has ramifications for the con­ cept of the image Godard would articulate after Comment fa va, com­ plementing PIERRE REVERDY's idea that the image is created from the juxtaposition of two distant, but true realities. The resulting image is akin to the message sent from transmitter to receiver. Michael Witt explains: 'A wide separation between elements carries a high potential communicative charge and a correspondingly high index of actual communication when the potential is resolved' (p. I 2 r ) . From the time Godard encountered it, Shannon's theory provided a schematic that would shape his thought for decades to come. Kevin ]. Hayes Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of

Communication, 1 998. . Theorie mathematique de la communication, 1 97 5 . Kevin ]. Hayes. Godard's Comment fa va, 2 00 2 A. Robert Phillip Kolker. Angle and Reality, 1 9 7 3 . Thomas Pynchon. Entropy, 1 960.

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Michael Witt. On Gilles Deleuze on Jean-Luc Godard , 1 999·

F RAN� OI S T RU F F AU T A Certain Tendency in French Cinema

some of the right-wing rhetoric for which Jean-Luc Godard and Frarn.;ois Truffaut were known in the 1 950s, 'Une Certaine Tendance du cinema fran\:ais' is the signature piece of the most prolific and vitriolic of the 'Young Turk' film critics, the future Nouvelle Vague filmmakers. Taking no prisoners, Truffaut regularly excoriated pillars of the French film industry; one such target, Claude Autant-Lara, called him a 'thug' . 'A Certain Tendency' was written while the young Truffaut was living with ANDRE BAZIN, co-editor of Cahiers du Cinema, where the text appeared after Truffaut made the revisions Bazin demanded in light of its incendiary topic and style. It sparked a scandal nevertheless, with many of French cinema's leading lights protesting its publica­ tion. For Truffaut had attacked head-on the so-called 'quality tradi­ tion' in French cinema and its manner of literary adaptation. Targeting figures such as Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, who alone or together were responsible for scripting some of the most prestigious French films since the late 1 930s, Truffaut derided 'scriptwriters' films', in particular for seeking 'equivalences' for liter­ ary passages deemed difficult to transpose to screen. 'Invent without betraying' was the watchword of the 'cinema de papa' scriptwriter, to which Truffaut retorted: 'it seems to me . . . that there is rather little invention and a great deal of betrayal' (p. 46). Refuting the notion that such equivalences had to be found, Truffaut remarked, with re­ spect to Autant-Lara's 1 949 film The Devil in the Flesh, with a screen­ play by Aurenche and Bost, that the book was more cinematic than the film: ' [Raymond] Radiguet's idea is a mise en scene idea, whereas the scene thought up by Aurenche and Bost is literary' (p. 48). Against this 'cinema of quality' tradition, Truffaut pointed to a number of French film auteu rs-Jean Renoir, ROBERT B R E S S ON, JEAN C OCTEAU and others-who did more than illustrate scripts. This was one half of the famed 'politique des auteurs' or 'authorship doctrine', practised by the Young Turks since their beginnings early in the dec­ ade and given a name by Truffaut in 1 9 5 5 (p. 45). The other half of the politique was the paradoxical elevation of Hollywood studio films

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Une Certaine Tendance du cinema fran\:ais. Cahiers du Cinema 3 1 O a nu a ry 1 954), 1 5 - 2 9 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard into great works of art, and their makers-Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock, denigrated by many French critics as hacks and seen back home as mere studio hands-into the ranks of great art­ ists. Years later Godard would mimic, while disavowing, the politique's provocations: 'Hitchcock is a greater genius than Chateaubriand' (p. 3 2). Despite the studio production method and the films' commercial bent, the Young Turks saw these men as solitary geniuses. In a 1 9 5 7 article refuting many of the politique's premises, Bazin pointed out that cinema is a popular and industrial art form, little given to notions of solitary genius (p. 43 8). Against this vision he posited the notion of the 'genius of the system' (p. 446)-genius in the sense of a prevailing spirit, or tutelary institution. He concluded that there was a 'personality cult' at work in the politique, ending his article with a challenge: authors yes, 'but of what? ' (p. 44 7 ). By the time Godard returned to Paris and the pages of Cahiers in 1 956 after a three-year hiatus in Switzerland, missing out on some of its key debates, Truffaut was an established and much-followed critic in the magazine Arts, a column Godard took over in 1 95 8 . Much later Godard explained that the politique was really an attempt to be heard in an industry designed, by union rules, government regula­ tion and the old boys' club, to be difficult to break into. He came to have grave misgivings about the politique, developing the notion, rather, of the post-war Hollywood studio as a place of egalitarian collaboration. Arguing that the politique was elitist and undemocratic in its assumptions, he lamented that it cast him into the role of a demigod which he has laboured all his life to cast off: 'I'm still the auteur, and that does me great harm and cuts things off immediately. You don't think of me as a normal man who, rather than doing cabinet-making-you don't think of your cabinet-maker as an author, or Shakespeare as a cabinet-maker' (p. 3 5 8). If we were to consider the mathematical sense of the term equiv­ alence, Godard here inflects Truffaut's 'formula' in an intriguing manner. Truffaut's equivalence works in only one direction: finding ways to convey literature on screen. The politique was uni-directional also: the solitary filmmaker shapes the film, but the film has no such relation with the filmmaker. A mathematical equivalence, however, goes both ways: cabinet-makers are authors, and authors are cabinet­ makers. How might a film and a filmmaker establish such relations? For this the film, and the social, economic, etc. relations around it,

F RA N \: O I S T R U F FAUT

including at the moment of consumption by an audience, would need to flow in some way to its maker, without the auteur's status 'cutting things off' . Such relations might be found in Godard's ide­ alised Hollywood studio of egalitarian collaboration (Bazin's genius of the system), and in his own attempts over the years to involve crew members and actors in activities beyond their normal remit to create new two-way production relations. So too his attempts to forge new relations with his audience. Even on the level of the script, something Godard does not use in any conventional sense, his use of drawings and photographs, creating a collage that opens onto un­ defined shooting possibilities, engenders a two-way communication between script and outside world which will shape the film shoot. Godard takes every opportunity to include Truffaut in his panthe­ on of great critics, alongside C HARLES BAUDELAIRE, Denis Diderot, ELIE FAURE, ANDRE MALRAUX and Bazin, but denigrates his films. After Truffaut won an Oscar in 1 974 for his film Day for Night ( 1 973), Godard called it a 'little provincial comedy' of the kind Americans like, adding that it reminded him of the films made in Occupied France under the collaborationist Vichy government (p. l 1 0). After Truffaut released the volume The Films in My Life in 1 97 5 , collecting a small sample o f his vast output a s a critic (but not the 'Tendency' article), Godard complained in public talks that Truffaut had 'censored' some of his vitriolic early comments on 'quality' film­ makers: 'I can recall very definite attacks against Claude Autant­ Lara, for example, and he took them out' (p. u o) . In fact, Truffaut chose not to republish some of his more inflammatory early work, but none of the republished material had been altered. In the vol­ ume in which Godard's talks were published under his supervision in 1 980, his most incendiary comments on Truffaut, and similarly unflattering remarks about his other great friend from their Young Turk and Nouvelle Vague days, JACQUES RIVETTE, were left out, and only restored in the English edition of 2 0 1 + Timothy Barnard Franr;:ois Truffaut. A Certain Tendency in French Cinema, 2009.

--- . Une Certaine Tendance du cinema frani;:ais, 1 98 7 . Andre Bazin. O n the 'Politique des auteurs' < 1 957>, 2 0 2 2 E. Jean-Luc Godard. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television

< 1 980>, 2 0 1 4. Franr;:ois Truffaut. Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs', l 95 5 .

F RAN, 1 986B. ---

. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , 1 998A.

--- . Une Boucle bouclee, 1 998x. Paul Valery. The Crisis of the Mind < 1 9 1 9>, 1 962A. ---

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.

A Fond Note on Myth < 1 9 2 8>, 1 96 z B .

. The Conquest of Ubiquity < 1 9 2 8>, 1 96+

A . E . VAN VOG T The World of Null-A JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre ( 1 994), we encounter an intriguing scene in which Jean­ Luc Godard, playing a version of himself, reads in bed at his home in Rolle. As he does throughout the film, he inhabits the frame while darkly lit, as a kind of shadow figure. We can make out neither the lineaments of his face nor the cover of the book from which he reads aloud. 'He was stunned', he intones in a half whisper, 'but strangely enough he had no desire to dwell on the point . . . . A thing is not what you say it is. It is much more. It is an ensemble in the largest sense. A chair is not just a chair. It is a structure of incon­ ceivably greater complexity, atomically, electronically, chemically, etc.' He looks up and the film cuts on his glance to a shot of a chair in his bedroom, its wicker seat partially damaged. Now switching to a lower, coarser vocal register (we cannot see his lips but this seems to be a line in voice-over) he continues: 'Therefore, to think of it sim­ ply as a chair constitutes what Korzybski calls an identification. And the totality of these identifications produces absurdity and tyranny' . Although Godard obscures the book he holds, its title can barely be discerned if one examines the screen up close: La Maison eternelle, the French translation of The House That Stood Still ( 1 950), a science fiction novel by the Canadian-born author A.E. van Vogt. In a curi­ ous twist, however, the words Godard recites come from a different van Vogt novel, the classic, if critically maligned, The World ofNull-A . The first sentence Godard speaks is of unknown provenance, but the chair reverie is taken from The World of Null-A (p. 2 5 9; 202 2 , pp. 2 7-2 8), which was first published in three parts in a popular science fiction magazine in 1 945 under the title The World of A, with the symbol 'A' denoting non-Aristotelian logic. It was republished in a significantly revised and abridged version in book form in 1 948. Beginning in the early 1 950s the novel's publishers gave it the title The World of Null-A, an evolution mirrored in the French edition. Despite its covertness, Godard's reference to Vogt's book crucially informs the reflection at hand, serving as it does both to further define the persona of 'JLG' and to advance a line of digressive, exploratory thinking that is already underway in the film.

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ALFWAY THROUGH

The World ofA. Astounding Science Fiction, August-October 1 945 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard The book's convoluted plot, which bears similarities to Godard's Alphaville: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution ( 1 965), takes place in a future technocracy in which the fate of all humans on earth is de­ cided by a 'Games Machine' comprised of 2 5 ,000 electronic brains. Gilbert Gosseyn, van Vogt's hero, comes to learn not only that his memories have been implanted and that his identity is false but also that his existence is dispersed in multiple bodies at once. In addi­ tion, he discovers that he possesses extraordinary mental and neural capabilities, which he uses to help combat a repressive empire. Godard reads from the 1 95 3 French translation by Boris Vian, a figure of major importance in the post-war Parisian milieu, both as a gifted artist of several media in his own right and as a self-effacing medium for transatlantic flows of jazz, 'low' genre fiction and a residual surrealism. Godard's own predilection for crossing 'high' and 'low' is well known. In JLG!JLG, critical engagements with Ludwig Wittgen­ stein's ON CERTAINTY ( 1 969) and with JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 'S The Words ( 1 96 3) go hand in hand with borrowings from less lofty cultural idi­ oms. The incorporation of van Vogt's text sustains a thread of quota­ tions whereby Godard turns to American science fiction in order to define his own predicament at the twilight of his career. Through allusions to Richard Matheson's 1 AM LEG END , for example, he paints himself as a kind of 'last man on earth' forced into solitude because of a global pandemic of vampirism. As Kevin ]. Hayes observes, this intertextual recourse to literature on the director's part highlights his remoteness and status as a misunderstood artist-intellectual whose glory days have passed (pp. l 5 8-59). The more occulted use of van Vogt's novel assumes added layers of complexity that go beyond both Godard 's sombre self-characterisation and the social critique he imports through the science fiction genre. The World of Null-A itself is densely packed with philosophical notions in support of 'non-Aristotelian' thinking. Van Vogt's play of ideas takes its primary cues from the work of Alfred Korzybski, in particular his mammoth treatise Science and Sanity ( 1 9 3 3). The pas­ sage from van Vogt's novel Godard reads and tweaks, an epigraph to the thirty-fourth chapter attributed to 'Anonymous', concerns a foundational Korzybskian precept: we are ineluctably separated from reality by our perception of it, and language, far from grasping what it names, only approximates it, in essence providing a 'map' for an infinitely more complex terrain (pp. 58-6 1 and 498). The error of

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard 'identification' results when the things of the world and the language that references them are taken to be one and the same and when we act habitually as if this were the case. The segment with the chair in Godard's bedroom is one of a series of thought exercises in JLG/JLG through which the Swiss­ French director confronts matters of perception and language that pose obstacles to his desired release from solitude and to his move­ ment towards some form of sociality. The chair he studies is not a 'chair' but, more exactly, a whirling dance of electrons that eludes the name we assign it, as well as the image Godard makes of it (cin­ ema is no innocent instrument in the equation). What we are shown is a point of view shot: Godard looking at a quotidian object, unremarkable except for its damaged seat (which further deters us from assigning it a default function). But we are urged to see that we are not yet seeing, that this 'thing' is in fact an 'ensemble' (van Vogt uses the term 'compound') for which ordi­ nary sight and its imposition of categories is ill-equipped. The mis­ take of 'identification' is what gives rise to 'absurdity and tyranny' (terms Godard has added to the text), but to begin to see in the way the scene promotes is, as the reference suggests, to accede to a potentially revolutionary power like that of van Vogt's Gosseyn, who can creatively synthesise his mind to the subatomic structures and electromagnetic fields of the world he navigates. (In Godard's stereoscopic Adieu au langage [ 2 0 1 4] a re-enactment of this bedroom scene occurs and we see the dust jacket of Null-A Three, van Vogt's third and final book in the Gosseyn saga from r 98 5 . This reference likewise figures in the context of thwarting revived totalitarianism.) And yet there is no individual at the centre of this vision, no single, monadic 'subject' in the familiar sense. In JLG/JLG, 'JLG' escapes his debilitating solitude only at the instant of his death, through a self-sacrificial dispersion into the very fabric of his work, into the many-voiced and the many-bodied weave of quotations from which it is intensively composed. Rick Warne r A.E. van Vogt. The World of Null-A , 2 00 2 .

. Le Monde des A, 2 0o r . Jean-Luc Godard. JLG/JLG et autres textes, 2 0 2 2 . Kevin J . Hayes. JLG!JLG-Autoportrait de decembre, Alfred Korzybski. Science and Sanity ( 1 9 3 3), 2 000. ---

2 002 B.

,

G ERARD DE VI LLI ERS SA S: West ofJerusalem lei et ailleurs ( 1 976) began as 'Jusqu'a la victoire (Methode de pensee et travail de la revolution palestinienne)', a film the Arab League commissioned Jean-Luc Godard to make with Jean-Pierre Gorin. Together they travelled to Jordan, the West Bank and Lebanon several times in 1 970 and shot much foot­ age depicting Palestinian troops. Black September-the Jordanian army's attack on Palestinian fighters that year-prematurely ended filming. For the next two years Godard and Gorin sought to make sense of the footage they had shot but left the project unfinished, partly because a motorcycle accident debilitated Godard for an ex­ tended period. Upon establishing a personal and professional rela­ tionship with Anne-Marie Mieville, Godard returned to the footage at her instigation and reconceived the project (crediting Mieville as co-director), juxtaposing what happened elsewhere (ailleurs), that is, in Palestine, with how it was perceived here (ici), in France. To develop this theme, Godard shot considerable additional footage. One shot depicts four similarly titled spy novels, a type of popular fiction he had spoofed on the voice-over soundtrack of One Plus One ( 1 968). All four volumes in lei et ailleurs are SAS novels by Gerard de Villiers. As a reporter for the weekly news magazine France-Dimanche, de Villiers had brought his knowledge of politi­ cal conflict to his fiction, or 'faction' as he called it, meaning fiction based on fact. With a worldwide network of friends and inform­ ants-diplomats, intelligence agents, journalists, military attaches­ he created uncanny stories of international intrigue which, in some cases, anticipated subsequent coups, assassinations and acts of terror. Although the circumstances of his SAS novels derive from current events, their action-packed plots and sexy characters recall the ad­ ventures ofJames Bond. Actually, it was Ian Fleming's death in 1 964 that inspired de Villiers to turn his talents to the spy novel. SAS in Istanbul, which appeared in 1 96 5 , was the first novel in a series that would run to two hundred titles before de Villiers' death in 2 0 1 3 . D e Villiers' spy-hero i s a tall, blond man named Malko von Linge. A bona fide Austrian prince, Malko bears the title Son Altesse Serinissime (His Most Serene Highness), hence his code name SAS .

T

HE FILM

SAS: A l'ouest de Jerusalem. Paris: P l on , 1 96 7 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Despite his distinguished European heritage, he works freelance as a special agent for the CIA. The hard-earned profits from his danger­ ous profession go towards restoring his ancestral home, a huge castle in Liezen, Austria. On his spy missions, he carries a photograph of his castle like a talisman. Malko uses no special gadgetry to accom­ plish his spycraft. He gets by on physical fitness, a broad knowledge of modern languages, a keen memory and expert marksmanship. His preferred weapon is an ultra-thin pistol, which he can tuck into the waist belt of his tight-fitting slacks. All four SAS novels in lei et ailleurs share similar cover graphics, making them resemble the consumer products depicted in Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle ( 1 967). The physical appearance of these paperback books suggests that regardless of their status as literature, they, too, are brand-name consumer products, obj ects packaged and marketed for mass consumption. The title of each book begins with the acronym 'SAS ', appearing in block capitals filling more than half the front cover which, window-like, displays an image of a young, scantily clad, gun-toting woman. The books first appear in a stack, but soon a pair of disembodied hands picks up the stack and shuffles them like a deck of cards. Each volume stays on top of the stack long enough for viewers to read its French title. As all four titles indicate, de Villiers often used Middle Eastern conflict as a theme. SAS: Death in Beirut initially rests atop the stack. SAS: Massacre in Amman comes to the top next, followed by .5AS: West ofJerusalem and SAS: Hanged in Bagdad. (In English, some books in the collection were published using the main character's first name, Malko, rather than SAS in the title.) Any one of the four might serve as an example. SAS: West of Jerusalem, for instance, is set during the aftermath of the 1 967 Six­ Day War, when Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Penin­ sula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and the West Bank from Jordan. The book's premise is that despite their setbacks Arab leaders and Palestinian spies have continued the war covertly west of Jerusalem, that is, in Europe and North America. As the story be­ gins, an evil emir and two Palestinian enforcers have kidnapped and tortured the teenaged daughter of the CIA chief and threaten to kill her unless her father gives them the names of every CIA operative in the Middle East, all of whom supposedly work for Israel by secret agreement with the United States. Rather than cave into pressure,

G E RA R D D E V I L L I E R S

the CIA chief kills himself, leaving Malka to stop the kidnappers and find the girl. Malko's mission takes him from Washington to Zurich to Sardinia, where the emir is keeping her captive. To his credit, de Villiers does not always give his spy novels happy endings. In this case, Malka destroys the emir but fails to save the girl's life. SAS: West of]erusalem is also a story of here and elsewhere. De Villiers made it a rule never to write about France or the French Secret Service. Instead, he used real events that occurred in other parts of the world to create escapist fiction for French readers. The public, Godard sardonically implies, has learned all they know about Middle East conflict from reading spy novels. Later in lei et ailleurs, a young man appears outdoors reading another de Villiers novel, SAS: Kill Henry Kissinger! Some members of the public know even less than readers of pulp fiction. Much of the additional footage shot for lei et ailleurs depicts a French family watching Cannon ( 1 9 7 1 -76), the American-made detective show starring William Conrad. Television, not the printed word, has become the medium that provides escap­ ist entertainment for the general public. The particular content-a formulaic show that begins with mystery and ends happily-further distances viewers from reality. Whereas the SAS novels have a fantasy quality, they possess enough reality to sustain the here-and-elsewhere dichotomy. Can­ non establishes an alternate binary. Instead of contrasting the site where news occurs with the site where it is reported, Cannon creates a dichotomy between where entertainment is produced and where it is consumed, omitting reality altogether. Regardless of their differ­ ences, the presence of both SAS: West ofJerusalem and Cannon in lei et ailleurs should encourage viewers to scrutinise the information they receive, to understand where it originates, where it ends up and what happens to it in the interim. Kevin ]. Hayes Gerard de Villiers. SAS: West ofJerusalem, 1 969.

J AM ES D. WAT S ON The Double Helix Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville's film Comment fa va ( 1 976), the two principal char­ acters in the film, an unnamed communist newspaperman (uncredited) and his co-worker Odette (Mieville) attend a meeting of their newspaper's joint production committee to review the progress on a video they are making to illustrate the process of publishing a communist newspaper. During the lengthy meeting, the man occu­ pies part of his time examining a folder of clippings from magazines and other print media that Odette has assembled. As he flips through the clippings, their images appear in close-up. The collection of printed material contains one book cover, which, as the present author has observed elsewhere, is 'the only visual reference to a spe­ cific book in the film' (p. 80). The book cover comes from Henriette Joel's French translation of James D. Watson's surprise bestseller, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Like Robert Ardrey's THE TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE in Week­ end ( 1 967), The Double Helix represents an interest in popular science that has occasionally surfaced throughout Godard's career. In this lively narrative of scientific discovery, Watson describes how he, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins together discovered the molecu­ lar structure of DNA. Their discovery, of course, proved to be one of the twentieth century's most important contributions to science, but it was The Double Helix, Watson's contribution to literature, that popularised the visual image of the DNA molecule's elegant struc­ ture. The significance of the discovery only partly accounts for the popularity of Watson's book. To write his autobiographical account, Watson used the narrative techniques of thrillers, detective stories and gossip columns. A Wunderkind who completed his doctorate at the age of twenty-two, Watson went to Europe to do research after graduate school instead of accepting a position as a professor at an American university. He explains: 'It was certainly better to imagine myself becoming famous than maturing into a stifled academic who had never risked a thought' (p. 3 5). Watson's intellectual snobbery

P

ART-WAY THROUGH

The Double Helix: A Personal Accoun t of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA . New York: Athenaeum, 1 968.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

J2l

simultaneously antagonises readers yet humanises him. Regardless of his impressive scientific mind, he has the same faults and foibles as everyone else. The Double Helix is very much a story of personalities, of the clash between ways of thinking and doing within the interna­ tional community of scientists who were rushing to make a discovery they all knew would be momentous. Watson's narrative reflects the sheer excitement of intellectual inquiry. He closes his story with an image of himself alone in Paris 'look­ ing at the long-haired girls near St Germain des Pres and knowing they were not for me. I was twenty-five and too old to be unusual' (p. 2 2 3). Watson's conclusion reveals his fine sense of irony. At the factual level, the conclusion reminds readers that Watson made this extraordinary scientific discovery before he turned twenty-five. But the sentence also reasserts the story's personal intrigue. Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, now understands how genetic material is transmitted through the process of reproduction. On the topic of the complex social interactions that typically preface the act of reproduction, this nerdy scientist has no clue. Imagining he knows what the young French women think about him, he reveals that he has no idea what they are thinking. He may have discovered DNA, but he has yet to probe the mysteries of human existence. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the success of Wat­ son's personal narrative made the double helix an icon of modern science. The DNA molecule frightens even as it fascinates. It is intimidating to imagine that this aesthetically beautiful molecule holds all the genetic material necessary to determine individual identity. The image of the double helix captured the public imagi­ nation worldwide, and references to it pervaded popular culture through the 1 970s. Godard and Mieville had previously expressed their fascination with Watson's discovery by depicting a model of the double helix in lei et ailleurs ( 1 976). As they contrast 'elsewhere', the place where news occurs, with 'here', the place where it is consumed, they identify two parallel strands, each essential to and inextricably linked with the other. The French translation of The Double Helix appeared in 1 968, the same year as Watson's original and the year after Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology, a work Godard references in Le Cai Savoir ( 1 968). In other words, as critical theory challenged the binary oppositions that traditionally underpin Western thought, science discovered that binary oppositions are essential to us all.

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Raymond Bellour has found the DNA molecule an apt meta­ phor for cinema. His essay 'The Double Helix' initially suggests that the cinema combines photography with the representation of movement, but by his conclusion, Bellour identifies other parallel strands that combine and intertwine in a similar fashion, speaking of a 'discourse-image' or, following Godard, a 'sound-image' (p. 1 99) . Armond White has also found the double helix an appropriate image for understanding Godard's work of the 1 990s. In the films he made that decade, Godard edited together film and video, connecting each with the other to convey the unique identity of his work (p. 2 6) . Because Odette i s the one who assembled the folder of clippings, she is the one responsible for including the cover of The Double Helix. The image of the DNA molecule demonstrates that the mother and father contribute equally to their child's identity and thus refutes the newspaperman's misogynistic concept of human reproduction, which he has derived by applying the model of the communication process Claude Shannon set forth in THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF COM MUNICATION. The cover of The Double Helix in the clippings file implies that Shannon's model, useful as it is for illustrating how we communicate, cannot adequately explain biological reproduc­ tion. Does the double helix work inversely? In other words, can it be used as a model of the communication process? Placed in a folder with other clippings that illustrate the complexities of modern com­ munication, the cover of The Double Helix implies that the work can function as a gloss on the communication process. The presence of Watson's book cover brings a feminist perspective to Godard's work, which is characteristic of Mieville's other contributions to their collaborative work since the mid- 1 9 7 os. As a parallel to the DNA molecule, communication becomes a process to which men and women contribute equally to create a clean, well-defined utterance in which they can both take pride. Kevin ]. Hayes James D. Watson. The Double Helix, 1 980. ---

. La Double hilice, 1 968.

Raymond Bellour. The Double Helix, 1 996. Kevin ]. Hayes. Godard's Comment (a va, 2 00 2 A. Armond White. Double Helix: Jean-Luc Godard, 1 996.

S I M ONE WEI L Gravity and Grace died in London at the age of thirty-four. During her short life, she taught philosophy; fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side; experienced the life of a factory worker in the Renault automotive plant at Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris; worked as an agricultural labourer on the farm of Gustave Thibon, a self-educated philosopher with whom a mutual friend had put her in contact; and, shortly before her death, joined the French Resistance. It is for her extraordinarily intense approach to both spirituality and social justice, however, that she is most renowned. Born to agnostic parents of Jewish descent, Weil under­ went a spiritual conversion to Christianity, but was never baptised, preferring to remain outside the Church because of her discomfort with Catholic hierarchy and an abiding interest in other forms of spirituality such as Buddhism. Weil escaped to the United States with her parents in 1 942 , subsequently moving to London to work with the French Resist­ ance . Before she left France in 1 942 , she presented Gustave Thibon with her collected notebooks, instructing him to do with them what he pleased if the two did not meet again. After Weil's death in 1 943 , Thibon assembled these into a compilation that became La Pesan­ teur et la grace, published in English as Gravity and Grace in 1 9 5 2 . The book presents a series o f aphoristic reflections o n love, divine absence, work, renunciation of the self and many more spiritual con­ cerns, which Thibon culled from Weil's notebooks and arranged into thematic chapters. In Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre, factory work is a recurrent motif, particularly during the period 1 97 2 to 1 98 2 , featuring for example in Tout va bien ( 1 9 7 2 , with Jean-Pierre Gorin), Six fois deux (Sur et sous la communication) ( 1 976) and Comment fa va ( 1 976), the latter two with Anne-Marie Mieville. Godard also spoke extensively about fac­ tory work in his lecture series in Montreal throughout 1 978. Factory labour is juxtaposed with the creative process and love, as is par­ ticularly evident in Passion ( 1 982) and Scenario du film Passion ( 1 982), in addition to serving variously as a slightly unstable metaphor for editing, the film industry, the capitalist system and pornography.

S

IMONE WEIL

La Pesanteur et la grace. Paris: Plon, 1 947.

3 24

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

In relation to Godard's films, one might immediately connect Simone Weil with Eloge de !'amour (200 1 ) , in which the protagonist Edgar is engaged in a 'project' which may or may not take the form of a cantata in her honour; in addition, the old Renault factory at Billancourt, where Weil worked for a period, features prominently. But Gravity and Grace, and indeed the character and personal nar­ rative of Weil herself, inherently informs a film Godard made two decades earlier. In Passion, Isabelle Huppert plays the role of Isa­ belle, a militant Catholic worker who has been fired from her job in a local factory and who comes into contact with a film crew in the town to make a film based on re-enactments of paintings by old masters. The character of Isabelle acts as a fulcrum around which the film's central themes are articulated. Within her, labour, love, purity, the sacred, sacrifice and art are embodied. Godard achieves this synthesis through a complex layering and overlapping in which he references, among others, Goya, Christ, the Virgin Mary and the symbolism of the Lamb of God. Central to both the character of Isabelle and the entire film are Simone Weil and Gravity and Grace. The purity of image incarnated in Isabelle's virginity, her associa­ tion to light and her innocence are reflected in her 'pure' approach to work and the dignity of labour. Work viewed as being sacred or as a form of grace is very much related to Weil's ideas in Gravity and Grace and The Lot of the Working Class ( 1 95 l ) , based on her experi­ ences in Billancourt: 'the powerful sense of collective existence the factory provides', she writes in the latter, 'can gratify the soul to the utmost' (p. 3 2 9). Godard asked Isabelle Huppert to read both books by Weil, but she declined. Despite this, 'the red Virgin' , as Weil was dubbed, is clearly the basis for the character of lsabelle, who resembles Weil in her virginity and is a former member of J eunesse Ouvriere Chretienne (Young Christian Workers)-a movement Weil admired. Isabelle's dedication to labour rights is matched only by an ascetic and intensely serious spirituality similar to Weil's. Godard draws a parallel between Weil's thinking and Goya's depiction of human suffering as recreated in the film. He com­ ments in Scenario du film Passion, his video essay exploring the themes of Passion, that Huppert saw no relation between herself and the oppressed Spanish civilians being massacred by French troops in Goya's The Third of May 1 808 ( 1 8 1 4), just as he intimates elsewhere that the actress had no interest in reading Weil. Indeed,

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the 'great moments of humanity as painted by the masters' , which he describes and seeks to capture in Scenario, are underpinned by Weil's profound feelings of humanity and compassion towards others, as encapsulated by her refusal while in hospital in England to eat any more than the wartime rations available in France, a decision that exacerbated her tubercular condition and hastened her premature death. Just as Weil's passionate belief in the sanctity of physical labour is encapsulated in the character of Isabelle, so too does Godard enter into a more profound dialogue with some of the abstract concepts proposed in Gravity and Grace, using Weil's idea of light as a source of nourishment and her description of grace as a downward movement free of weight or gravity. The associated imagery of light, whiteness, purity and grace in Passion is corporeally reflected in the figure of Isabelle, who at several points in the film is very delibera­ tely framed with a light source just behind, as if it emanates from her. As regards grace as movement, Godard speaks in Scenario du film Passion of wanting Isabelle Huppert to find a movement rather than a character. This notion of movement that is beyond gravity is reflected in a beautifully fluid re-enactment of El Greco's Virgin of the Immaculate Conception ( 1 608- 1 4) in which Godard, through the use of ascending and descending vectors, seems to capture visually Weil's idea outlined in Gravity and Grace that the natural movements of the soul are controlled by a force equivalent to gravity, the only exception to this being grace. Weil's profound commitment to social justice and spirituality, in tandem with her self-imposed detachment from orthodox insti­ tutions, doubtlessly appealed to Godard, who has always viewed himself-and indeed refers to himself in Scenario du film Passion­ as an exile, an outsider, while remaining an avid observer of the human spirit. What truly informs Passion, however, is the emphasis in Gravity and Grace on light and movement as a form of grace, which Godard directly and compellingly relates to the medium of cinema and its potentialities. Jill Murphy Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace, 2 00 2 .

. La Pesanteur e t la grace, 2004. --- . La Condition ouvriere ( 1 9 5 1), 2 002 . ---

LU DWI G WI T TGENS TEI N On Certainty GODARD's interest in themes associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work emerges near the end ofJe vous salue, Marie ( 1 985). Marie (Myriem Roussel) and Joseph (Thierry Rode) try to reconcile before the baby is born. She says she loves him and asks for the same. 'I love you', Joseph says, reaching for her stomach. 'No ! ' she replies. Their words are repeated several times, becoming increasingly heated. The angel Gabriel must intervene for Joseph to understand. 'I love you', Joseph says, and makes a differently paced gesture. 'Yes', she replies. Godard's treatment of language here is not the semiotic model of his earlier films, orientated by the struc­ ture of linguistic signs, but one in which meaning, and successful communication, depends on the embedded context. As Wittgenstein urged philosophers to do, Godard pays attention to what should be said, and when and how, and which gestures accompany speech. Over the course of his career, Wittgenstein shifted emphasis, eschewing a search for the elementary and basic units of language and turning to explorations of how language functions in ordinary situations. In a key section of the Philosophical Investigations, he writes: 'for a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language' (§ 43 ). The method is to look and see. On Certainty, a posthumous collection of notes written just prior to his death and appearing in both English and French translations in 1 969, a year before the German edition, forms part of this philo­ sophical project. Taking up G.E. Moore's discussion of the grounds of knowledge against sceptical doubt-Moore argued for the cer­ tainty of the external world based on his knowledge that 'here is a hand'-Wittgenstein quickly notes that the mere fact of feeling certain about a piece of knowledge will not satisfy the sceptic ('From its seeming to me-or to everyone-to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so' [§2 ] ; 'One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew" ' [§ 3 ]). A different approach is needed, one not grounded on claims to knowledge, which can be true or false. Wittgenstein's solution turns on putting the sceptic's question into context: is it possible to live ac-

J

EAN-LUC

On Certainty, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe & G.H. von Wright. New York: Harper, 1 969.

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cording to a thoroughgoing scepticism? When does it make sense to doubt? Answering these questions, we learn we can live with the pos­ sibility of scepticism, since the crises it engenders only make sense in specific contexts. Some features of the world-that I have a hand, for example-are grounded in a way that does not depend on evidence. From within these discussions Godard quotes two sections: Can one say: 'Where there is not doubt there is no knowledge either? ' (§ 1 2 1 ) If a blind man were to ask me 'Have you got two hands? ' I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don't know why I should trust my eyes. For why should I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? (§ 1 2 5 ) These lines first appear in Six fois deux (Sur et sous la communication) ( 1 976, with Anne-Marie Mieville), but play a more important role in JLG/JLG: Autoportrait du decembre ( 1 994) and Histoire (s) du cinema (1 989-98). Each time, however, Godard leaves out the final sentences of § 1 2 5 : ' What is to be tested by what? (Who decides what stands fast?) And what does it mean to say that such and such stands fast? ' In JLG/JLG, Godard sits at his desk reading from On Certainty. He recites the two sections, placing his hands over the page as he speaks about making sure by looking. He closes the book, names the author and title (pp. 2 2-2 3 ), then puts it away and begins read­ ing from the volume underneath, Denis Diderot's Letter on the Blind ( 1 749). Godard's engagement with Wittgenstein here takes two paths. On the one hand, he literalises the passage, placing his hands on the page-presumably, in front of his eyes-and then quoting Diderot on blindness; later, a blind woman will edit strips of film by touch alone. On the other hand, Godard draws a methodological lesson. This sequence comes soon after a quotation from PIERRE REVERDY's account of the image as the rapprochement of two realities; this forms-along with Denis de Rougemont's motto of 'thinking with one's hands'-one of Godard's favourite ways of describing his own practice of montage. Rather than claims to certainty, definite pieces of knowledge, the evocation of Wittgenstein suggests that Godard is interested in testing the grounds of such connections. The brief sequence from JLG/JLG is incorporated into Histoire(s) du cinema, though split into image and sound. The video appears

328

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without sound in Chapter 3 A, 'La Monnaie de l'absolu' ( 1 998), right after a sequence on the relation of cinema to the Second World War­ pairing Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter ( 1 95 5) and ROBERTO R O S S ELLINr 's Rome, Open City ( 1 945), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds ( 1 963) and footage of a German bomber-and suggests a problem of judgement and testing: to what extent are these disparate facts con­ nected with one another? To what extent can the horrors of the war be recognised in and through the cinema? Godard stresses that this process is not a matter merely of documentation, recording what happened, but the creation of images that allow the effects of war to be grappled with, understood and negotiated. The following sequence on the relation between Manet's paintings and the origins of cinema makes the emphasis on images explicit. A guarantee of certainty­ photographic recording-is set aside in favour of questions of use. The audio portion of the clip is in Chapter I A, 'Toutes les his­ toires' ( 1 989/98) ( 1 998A, vol. 1 , p. 1 40), soon after the infamous super­ imposition of footage of Ravensbruck shot by George Stevens, a clip of Elizabeth Taylor leaning down to kiss Montgomery Clift in Ste­ vens' A Place in the Sun ( 1 95 l ) and a detail from Giotto's Noli me tangere (c. l 3 06) of Mary Magdelene reaching down towards Christ. Again, Godard literalises Wittgenstein's words, this time with clips of Edmund from Rossellini 's Germany, Year Zero ( 1 948) and Gel­ somina from Frederico Fellini's La Strada ( 1 954) covering their eyes with their hands. Are they shielding their eyes from the horrors in front of them or unable to process what they have seen? The jux­ taposition of these elements raises interpretive questions central to Godard's late work: what is the relation between cinema and his­ tory? Again, Godard eschews readings that incline towards certainty: there is no way to know in advance, no way to be sure of the con­ nection ('what is to be tested by what? '). At stake is not the existence of the world as such, nor proof for wartime atrocities. What matters are the specific ways in which images are used, and how they fit into Godard's attempt to think about history in and through cinema. Daniel Morgan Ludwig Wittgenstein. Uber Gewissheit, 1 970.

-- . De la certitude, 2 006. Jean-Luc Godard. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. , 1 998A.

-- . JLG/JLG et autres textes, 202 2 . Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations < 1 95 3 >, 1 9 5 3 ·

VI RG I N I A WOOLF The Waves

HAT VIRGINIA WOOLF's

novel The Waves serves as an influ­ ence for Jean-Luc Godard's version of Shakespeare 's KING LEAR ( 1 987/2002) is evinced by the novel's appearance in one of the later scenes of the film. The shot of the book washing ashore on the banks of Lake Geneva coupled with the reading of its final paragraph near the close of the film are the most prominent ref­ erences to Woolf's novel in Godard's Lear, but they are hardly the only ones. From the waves motif to the character named Virginia, allusions to The Waves are ubiquitous in King Lear, yet unlike many of the recurring fragments of art featured in the film, Woolf's novel does not function merely as an example of the slow re-emergence of culture post-Chernobyl; rather, Woolf's text is integrally woven into some of the most salient themes in Godard's film. One such theme, which permeates both texts, is the failure of language. Written from multiple perspectives, The Waves traces the experiences of six characters from childhood to death. Woolf's char­ acters frequently interact but never speak aloud to one another; their exploits and emotions are conveyed strictly through idiosyncratic internal monologues. This absence of verbal intercourse signifies a profound interpersonal disconnection arising from the characters' inability to express themselves through language. Godard's characters, too, seem incapable of communicating verbally and appear detached and isolated even while they are in each other's company. In the few instances where one character speaks directly to another, the listener remains inactive by avoiding eye contact with the speaker. Addition­ ally, the presentation of dialogue in Lear frequently mimics internal discourse. Words are regularly intoned by off-screen characters or are delivered as incorporeal voice-overs. Regardless of the dialogues' nebulous origins, the characters physically present in the shots seldom react to the language, often seeming unable even to hear it. More­ over, the voice-overs, as well as the dialogue spoken by characters on screen, are repeatedly overwhelmed by the film's complex polyphonic soundtrack, further rupturing its already disjointed discourse. This breakdown of language is not only the result of an inabil­ ity to communicate verbally: the characters in both works do not

T

The Waves. New York: Harcourt, Brace,

193 r .

3 3°

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

seek to establish or facilitate linguistic connections with others. The secondary characters in Godard's film are often passive and some­ times objectified. The attraction ofWilliam Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth (Peter Sellars) to Cordelia (Molly Ringwald) is motivated by artis­ tic impulse. Her obvious internal turmoil fails to humanise her or elicit his sympathy, thereby reducing Cordelia to an object. Even as he interviews her privately, Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth is detached; he focuses not on Cordelia's face but on the words he uses to construct her. His single-minded quest to uncover the work of his ancestor, as well as his indifferent treatment of those he observes, is modelled on Bernard's obsession to articulate the perfect phrase. Arguably the main character in The Waves, Bernard attempts to transpose the con­ crete experiences of his friends into words; he does not request their participation, however, but rather requires their submission. 'Let me then create you', Bernard inwardly implores another character, as he tries to convey in words the nature of his friend's temperament (p. 85). Both Bernard and Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth are aloof cultural archaeologists who do not interact with others but who construct their subjects empirically for their twin purposes. Neither Bernard nor Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth records complete observations in their notebooks; instead, they compile fragmented phrases. Bernard's obsessive note-taking stems from an impulse to convey the concrete through the imaginary, and he compares this ambition and his eclectic method of composition with another char­ acter's more orthodox efforts to write a book. Bernard defends his style by insisting he must 'open the little trapdoor and let out these linked phrases in which I run together whatever happens, so that instead of incoherence there is perceived a wandering thread, lightly j oining one thing to another' (p. 49). Bernard's defence of his work, his insistence that the seemingly disparate phrases he spends a life­ time meticulously detailing in his notebook are tenuously linked, is a thesis echoed in Godard's film and manifested physically in the scene in which Mr Alien (Woody Allen) sews strips of the film together, lit­ erally connecting the film's images with a thread. Bernard's method of juxtaposing phrases, which he frequently terms 'images', is artic­ ulated by Godard, who consistently emphasises the non-verbal by prioritising the image. Speaking as Professor Pluggy, Godard offers PIERRE REVERDY's definition of the image and asserts that it 'bring[s] together two relatively distant realities' (p. 49 5). This bringing

33 1

VIRGINIA WOOLF

together-their rapprochement, a word much used by Godard which denotes a kind of juxtaposition of two distinct forces-produces a new reality capable of conveying that which language cannot. As Pluggy's voice describes the image to Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth, his theory is illustrated by the alternating images of Henry Fuseli's painting The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth ( 1 784) and a still frame of a Tex Avery wolf frozen in an act of self-cannibalism. The juxtaposi­ tion of these images serves two purposes. First, their union signifies the breakdown of the barrier between high and low culture as Lady Macbeth becomes the cartoon wolf. Second and more significantly, the images refer to two of the authors of the film's primary sources. Lady Macbeth is yet another reference to Shakespeare, while the wolf alludes to Virginia Woolf. Although Avery's wolf is presumably male, the merger of the overtly feminine figure of Lady Macbeth and the ambiguously gendered cartoon transfers femininity to the animal. As Peter Donaldson has recognised in his book Shakespear­ ean Films/Shakespearean Directors ( 1 990), the wolf 'faces the spectator, somehow devouring and extruding himself like the mythic uroboros, his legs disappearing into his mouth and his arms and hands emerg­ ing from his ears' (p. 2 08). This act of self-consumption serves as a visible symbol of the reflexivity that permeates Woolf's and Godard's work and further underscores Lear's recursive quality. Although the seemingly disparate images in the film appear to undermine coher­ ence, Godard's use of repetition establishes, if not a sense of unity, then at least a certain constancy. Repeated allusions to Woolf, while less obvious than Godard's references to Shakespeare, are no less significant. Indeed, Woolf's wandering thread runs subtly yet inex­ tricably through the variegated intertextual fabric of King Lear. Lindsey O'Connor Virginia Woolf. The Waves, 2 0 1 9. ---

. Les Vagues ( 1 993), 2020.

Peter Donaldson. Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, l 990. Pierre Reverdy. L'lmage ( 1 9 1 8), 2 0 1 0.

Godard hors texte Fredric Jameson

An aesthetic and in its day revolutionary literary theory revived the doctrine of art for art's sake by ruthlessly excluding anything 'extrinsic' from the 'autonomous literary text' : no Eliotic footnotes, no historical prefaces, above all no 'contexts'-thereby leaving us in a stifling place from which only poetry, seemingly, could emerge unscathed. Textuality at length came along to save us from this con­ finement: 'il n 'y a pas de hors texte! ' If everything is a text, then the extrinsic blots and incursions are also textual and can be expected to be soaked up into a larger and richer 'text' that revels in its own contradictions and heterogeneities. Texts began to expand and contract, from the objects of Borges' and Lem's imaginary book reviews all the way to the inclusion of Godard's problems with funding, his dealings with his producers and refractory stars, and so forth. It is a little like Joyce's way with mis­ prints on his first proofs: don't correct them, surround and absorb them, build them into a new and more comprehensive sentence. The present quite astonishing book largely transcends its more reasonable ancestor, namely the idea of the individual (and dispos­ able) canon. Here we are to establish, not a durable tradition of the classics, but rather one in which we include Flaubert's own most cherished and idiosyncratic reading in his own works: The Golden Ass, along with Quijote and Candide, a pile of theological oddities (heresies being the most delectable), and the obligatory romantic dramas of his own time. The novelty, however, lay in a sense of the 'cultural literacy' of the age, a kind of nascent cloud or noosphere, in which the stupidest verbal expressions or cliches were born and died like short-lived cells or protoplasms. It would be wrong, how­ ever, to consider Flaubert's dealings with these extrinsic materials as

3 34

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

satire or as a prophetic denunciation of a fallen world: he was just as profoundly convinced of his own stupidity and as willing to endorse such enormities as his own thoughts, his own personal property, thereby absorbing the external cultural and historical ecosystem in a scandalous and unparalleled operation. One is tempted to grasp Godard's practices in much the same way: it is no surprise to find this inveterate movie-goer carrying through life the random images of a range of films, from the ac­ knowledged classics to the most ignoble or vulgar pot-boilers, and combining their isolated memories in indecipherable ideograms for private reasons and visual intensities. But to encounter bits and pieces of books as well, sentences which hardly make it to the status of aphorisms, titles which barely answer the unasked question 'What am I thinking about now? '-this is not even Joycean; it seems, quite unfairly, to demand the psychoanalytic free association of the post­ war French intellectual. Its demands at any rate transcend the professional calling of the film scholar, let alone the ordinary movie­ goer, however film-literate he or she may be. But what a pleasure ! This is a new form, a new genre, distantly related, no doubt, to the journal, in which we browse in search of this or that idiosyncratic reflection of an unpredictable culture producer in off hours, in her leisure noting down thoughts you would not nec­ essarily wish to share with other people, let alone the public at large. And yet, we must admit that Godard really does wish to share them. Indeed, what is striking about Godard's career is the frequency, at all accounts, of moments in which the self-styled filmmaker is at odds with himself and virtually clueless: 'what do I do now? And how do you go about doing it? ' One of his most frequent confessions or anxieties is 'I don't know how to make a film' (this is, once again, an external or autobiographical revelation which he instinctively enough reincorporates in the film itself). What we call self-referentiality-the work designating itself and its own process of production-has here become a badge of hon­ our, often requiring its hapless thinker himself to be drawn inside the film along with it (or at least his inimitable voice). Unsurprising then that he should also in passing include whatever he happened to be reading at the time, or the lines of verse that drift out at him from the unconscious. They are part of the sound part of the sound/ image, and one must not necessarily seek to endow them with that

G O DARD H O R S TEXTE

335

thematic meaning we must also refuse to the components of the im­ age associations. The names and quotations are neither indispensable components of a film a these or film essay, nor allusions to some un­ written auto-fiction; they are raw materials, like everything else in these cinematographic spectacles. Nor are they clues to 'influences', a threadbare pseudo-idea we might do well to retire for a time. What influence really meant, when it meant something, was simply permission to do something else, something new and different, that you hadn't thought of before. Even when it becomes pastiche, influence is not yet a concept in its own right; it demands, not to be detected, but to be structurally dis­ mantled and historically registered. The present book is not to be thought of along the lines of those commentaries on Joyce or Pound to which we can be so grateful, although in a pinch and on occasion it might well be used that way. Thumbnail biographies of intellectual instants? Perhaps. Insofar as all these references constitute and name random moments in the intellectual life of Godard, they offer ways, not to understand him (how could anyone possibly do that?), but rather to live a moment inside one of his thoughts, however insubstantial and ephemeral. It is a great privilege to be able to do so.

Table of Entries

5

HENRI ALLEG ( 1 9 2 1 -2 0 1 3 )

The Question, 1 9 5 8 Junji Hori

8

ARAGON ( 1 897-1 982)

Heartbreak, 1 94 1 Timothy Barnard ll

ROBERT ARDREY ( 1 908- 1 980)

The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiiy into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations, l 966 Makenna Green

14

HANNAH ARENDT ( 1 906-1 975)

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality ofEvil, 1 963 Jill Murphy

17

RAYMOND ARON ( 1 905-1 983) 18

Lectures on Industrial Society, l 962

Kevin ]. Hayes 20

ALAIN BADIOU (b. 1 9 3 7)

Number and Numbers, l 990 Dmitry Golotyuck & Antonina Derzhitskaya

23

HONORE D E BALZAC ( 1 799- 1 8 50)

Old Goriot, l 8 3 5 Kevin ]. Hayes

26

HONORE D E BALZAC ( 1 799-1 850) A Murky Business, l 841

Patrick M. Bray

29

AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES) ( 1 9 34-2 0 1 4)

Dutchman, 1 964 David Sterritt

32

MAURICE BARDECHE ( 1 907-1 998) & ROBERT B RASILLACH ( 1 909- 1 945)

The Histoiy ofMotion Pictures, 1 9 3 5 Brett Bowles

338 35

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard GEORGES BATAILLE (LORD AUCH) ( 1 897- 1 962)

Story of the Eye, 1 9 2 8 Jonathan Strauss

38

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ( 1 8 2 1-1 867)

The Flowers of Evil, 1 8 5 7 Ethan Spigland

41

ANDRE BAZIN ( 1 9 1 8- 1 9 5 8) The Science Film: Chance Beauty, 1 947 Timothy Barnard

44

ANDRE BAZIN ( 1 9 1 8- 1 958) Decoupage, 1 9 5 2 Timothy Barnard

47

SAMUEL BECKETT ( 1 906- 1 989) The Image, 1 959 Andre Habib

50

SAMUEL BECKETT ( 1 906- 1 989) Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts, l 96 l

Andre Habib

53

SAMUEL BECKETT ( 1 906-1 989) Ill Seen Ill Said, l 98 1

Andre Habib

56

ROB ERT BENAYOUN ( 1 9 2 6-1 996)

The Look of Buster Keaton, 1 98 2 Kevin ]. Hayes

59

HENRI BERGSON ( 1 859- 1 94 1 ) Matter and Memory, l 896

Sam Ishii-Gonzales

62

MAURICE B LANCHOT ( 1 907-2003)

Friendship, l 97 l Arthur Mas

65

JORGE LUIS BORGES ( 1 899- 1 986)

Other Inquisitions 1 937-1952, 1 9 5 2 John Parris Springer 68

JORGE L U I S BORGES ( 1 899- 1 986)

The Book of Imaginary Beings, 1 9 5 7 Rick Warner

71

JORGE LUI S BORGES ( 1 899-1 986) Interview, 1 963 Timothy Barnard

T A B L E O F E N TR I E S

74

77

BERTOLT BRECHT ( 1 898- 1 956) Notes on the Opera Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonny, 1 9 3 0 Timothy Barnard BERTOLT B RECHT ( 1 898- 1 956)

Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow ofThings, 1 965 Daniel Fairfax 80

ROBERT BRESSON ( 1 90 1 - 1 999)

Notes on the Cinematograph, 1 97 5 Kevin ]. Hayes 83

ANDRE B RETON ( 1 896- 1 966) Nadja, 1 9 2 8 Steven Ungar

86

HERMANN BROCH ( 1 896- 1 9 5 1 ) The Death of Virgil, 1 945 Roberto Chiesi

89

LEON B RUNSCHVICG ( 1 869- 1 944)

Descartes and Pascal, Readers ofMontaigne, 1 942 Timothy Barnard 92

CHARLES BUKOWSKI ( 1 9 2 0- 1 994) An Evil Town, 1 97 2 Roland-Franc;ois Lack

95

CAUMERY ( MAURICE LANGUEREAU) ( 1 867- 1 94 1 ) & JOSEPH PINCHON ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 5 3) Becassine among the Turks, 1 9 1 9 Tamara Tasevska

98

RAYMOND CHANDLER ( 1 888-1 959) The Big Sleep, 1 9 3 9 John Parris Springer

IOI

PETER CHEYNEY ( 1 896- 1 9 5 1 ) This Man Is Dangerous, 1 93 6 John Parris Springer

I 04 ELDRIDGE CLEAVER ( 1 9 3 5- 1 998) Soul on lee, 1 968 Robyn McGee I 07 JEAN COCTEAU ( 1 889- 1 963) Thomas the Impostor, I 92 3 Kevin ]. Hayes I I O MAHMOUD DARWISH ( 1 94 1-2008) The Flowers of Blood Shaul Setter

339

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard 113

GUY DEBORD ( 1 93 1 - 1 994)

Society of the Spectacle, 1 967 Richard Dienst I I 6 RENE DES CARTES ( 1 596- 1 650) Discourse on the Method, l 63 7 Mateus Araujo l

1 9 FRAN\:OISE DOLTO ( 1 908-1 988) The Jesus of Psychoanalysis, 1 97 7 Jill Murphy

1 2 2 FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 8 8 1 ) The Idiot, l 868 Volker Pantenburg 1 2 5 MARGUERITE DURAS ( 1 9 1 4- 1 996) The War: A Memoir, l 98 5 Junji Hori 1 2 8 MARGUERITE DURAS ( 1 9 1 4- 1 996) The Lover, 1 984 Cyril Beghin 1 3 1 T . S . ELIOT ( 1 888-1 965) Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1 9 1 9 Lindsey O'Connor 1 34 PAUL ELUARD ( 1 895- 1 9 5 2 ) Capital of Pain, 1 9 2 6 Michel Cade 1 3 7 WILLIAM FAULKNER ( 1 897- 1 962) Absalom, Absalom!, 1 9 3 6 Colin MacCabe 1 40 WILLIAM FAULKNER ( 1 897- 1 962) The Wild Palms, 1 9 3 9 Kevin ]. Hayes 1 43 ELIE FAURE ( 1 8 7 3- 1 9 3 7) History ofArt, 1 909- 1 9 2 7 Timothy Barnard 1 46 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 880) Bouvard and Pecuchet, 1 88 1 Kevin ]. Hayes 1 49 LOUI S FORTON ( 1 8 79- 1 93 4) The Pieds Nicke!es Gang, 1 908-1 912, 1 965 Tamara Tasevska

TA B L E O F E N T R I E S

1 5 2 GEBE (GEORGES B LONDEAUX) ( 1 9 2 9-2 004) The Year 01, 1 97 1 - 1 974 Timothy Barnard 1 5 5 JEAN GENET ( 1 9 1 0- 1 986) Prisoner ofLove, l 986 Kevin ]. Hayes 1 5 8 JEAN GIRAUDOUX ( 1 8 8 2 - 1 944) My Friend from Limousin, 1 9 2 2 James S . Williams 1 6 1 JEAN GIRAUDOUX ( 1 8 8 2 - 1 944) Amphitryon 38, 1 92 9 James S . Williams 1 64 DAVID GOODIS ( 1 9 1 7- 1 967) Street ofNo Return, 1 954 Kevin ]. Hayes 1 6 7 JULIEN GREEN ( 1 900- 1 998) Adrienne Mesurat, 1 9 2 7 & Leviathan, 1 92 9 Karla Oeler 1 70 JULIEN GREEN ( 1 900- 1 998) Midnight, 1 93 6 Karla Oeler 1 7 3 MARTIN HEIDEGGER ( 1 889- 1 976) Being and Time, 1 9 2 7 Franz-Emmanuel Schiirch 1 76 MARTIN HEIDEGGER ( 1 889- 1 9 76) Off the Beaten Track, 1 950 Franz-Emmanuel Schiirch 1 79 HENRI LANGLOIS (D . C .D.) ( 1 9 1 4- 1 977) The French Avant-garde, 1 95 2 Timothy Barnard 1 8 2 EMMANUEL LEVINAS ( 1 906- 1 995) Time and the Other, l 94 7 Rick Warner 1 8 5 JACK LONDON ( 1 876- 1 9 1 6) Nam-Bok the Unveracious, 1 902 Kevin ]. Hayes 1 88 ANDRE MALRAUX ( 1 90 1 -1 976) Man 's Hope, 1 9 3 7 Timothy Barnard

341

342

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

1 9 1 ANDRE MALRAUX ( 1 90 1 - 1 976) Sketch for a Psychology of the Cinema, 1 940 Timothy Barnard 1 94 ANDRE MALRAUX ( 1 90 1 - 1 976) The Psychology ofArt, 3 vols. , 1 947- 1 949 Timothy Barnard 1 97 ANDRE MALRAUX ( 1 90 1 - 1 976)

The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture, 3 vols. , 1 95 2 - 1 954 Timothy Barnard 2 00 THOMAS MANN ( 1 8 7 5- 1 9 5 5) Lotte in Weimar, 1 93 9 Ewa Mazierska 2 03 MAO ZEDONG ( 1 893-1 9 76)

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, l 964 Timothy Barnard 2 06 HUGUETTE MARQUAND FERREUX ( 1 9 2 5-2 0 1 9) Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois, 3 vols. , 1 99 1 Timothy Barnard 2 09 RICHARD MATHESON ( 1 9 2 6-20 1 3) I Am Legend, 1 954 John Parris Springer 2 1 2 HORACE McCOY ( 1 897- 1 95 5) Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, 1 948 Kevin ]. Hayes 2 1 5 HERMAN MELVILLE ( 1 8 1 9- 1 89 1 )

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, 1 85 7 Kevin ] . Hayes 2 1 8 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE ( 1 5 3 3- 1 59 2 ) Essays, l 580 Mark Cohen 2 2 1 ALBERTO MORAVIA ( 1 907-1 990) Contempt, 1 9 54 Timothy Barnard 2 24 MICHEL MOURLET (b. 1 93 5) On an Unknown Art, 1 95 9 Vinzenz Hediger 2 2 7 ALFRED DE MUSSET ( 1 8 1 0- 1 8 5 7) Don 't Trifle with Love, 1 8 34 Kevin ]. Hayes

TA B L E O F E N TR I E S

2 30 VLADIMIR NIZHNY ( 1 906- 1 95 8) Lessons with Eisenstein, 1 95 7 Timothy Barnard 2 3 3 OVID (43 B C- 1 7/ r 8 AD) Metamorphoses, 7-8 AD Anthony Guneratne 2 3 6 PIER PAOLO PAS OLINI ( 1 9 2 2- 1 975) The 'Cinema of Poetry', 1 965 Michael Cramer 2 3 9 CHARLES PEGUY ( 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 1 4)

Clio: Dialogue between History and the Pagan Soul, l 9 l 7 Daniel Fairfax 242 EDOUARD PEISSON ( 1 896- 1 963) Outward Bound from Liverpool, l 9 3 2 Kevin ]. Hayes 245 EDGAR ALLAN POE ( 1 809- 1 849) William Wilson, 1 8 3 9 Kevin ]. Hayes 2 48 EDGAR ALLAN POE ( 1 809- 1 849) The Oval Portrait, 1 842 Kevin ]. Hayes 25 1

EDGAR ALLAN POE ( 1 809- 1 849) The Power of Words, 1 845 John Parris Springer

2 54 EZRA POUND ( 1 8 8 5- 1 97 2 ) The Cantos, 1 9 2 5- 1 9 70 Corin Depper 2 5 7 FREDERIC PROKO SCH ( 1 906- 1 989) Nine Days to Mukulla, 1 9 5 3 Kevin ]. Hayes 2 60 MARCEL PROUST ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 2 2 ) In Search of Lost Time, 1 9 1 3- 1 9 2 7 Anna Shechtman 2 6 3 RAYMOND QUENEAU ( 1 903-1 976) Odile, 1 9 3 7 Catherine Webster 2 66 RAYMOND QUENEAU ( 1 903- 1 976) The Fatal Moment, l 946 Jacques Aumont

343

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard

3 44

269 PATRICK QUENTIN The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, 1 947 Kevin ]. Hayes

2 7 2 CHARLES FERDINAND RAMUZ ( 1 8 78-1 947) Aime Pache, Vaudois Painter, l 9 I O Kevin ]. Hayes

2 7 5 PIERRE REVERDY ( 1 889-1 960) The Image, 1 9 1 8 Kevin ]. Hayes

2 7 8 ARTHUR RIMBAUD ( 1 854- 1 8 9 1 ) A Season in Hell, l 8 7 3 Julien d'Abrigeon

2 8 1 JACQUES RIVETTE ( 1 9 2 8-20 1 6) The Hand, 1 9 5 7 Timothy Barnard

2 84 GLAUBER ROCHA ( 1 9 3 9- 1 98 1 ) An Aesthetics o f Hunger, 1 965 Mateus Araujo

2 8 7 ERIC ROHMER (MAURICE SCHERER) ( 1 9 2 0-2 0 1 0) On Three Films and a Certain School, 1 95 3 Timothy Barnard

2 90 ROB ERTO RO S S ELLINI ( 1 906- 1 977) Interview, 1 959 Michael Cramer

2 9 3 MARCEL SACOTTE ( 1 9 1 2-2 0 1 3) Prostitution, 1 959 Glen W Norton

2 96 JEAN-PAUL SARTRE ( 1 905-1 980) Nausea, 1 9 3 8 Daniel Fairfax

2 99 WILLIAM S HAKESPEARE ( 1 564- 1 6 1 6) King Lear, 1 608 Mark Nicholls

3 0 2 CLAUDE E. SHANNON ( 1 9 1 6-200 1 ) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, l 948 Kevin ]. Hayes

3 0 5 FRAN, trans. Jeffrey Haight & Annie Mahler. Evanston: Marlboro Press/Northwestern University Press. Aragon 1 97 2 . What is Art, Jean-Luc Godard ? < 1 96p, trans. Royal S. Brown. Focus on Godard, ed. Royal S. Brown. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, l 3 5-46. 1 99 3 . Collages clans le roman et clans le film ( 1 965). Collages. Paris: Hermann,

93-1 14. Hanna h Aren d t 1 969. Introduction. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, l-5 5 . 2 007. The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn & Ron Feldman. New York: Schocken. Hanna h Aren d t & Karl J aspers 1 99 2 . Correspondence 1 926-1 969 < 1 98p, trans. Robert Kimber & Rita Kimber, ed. Lotte Kohler & Hans Saner. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. J acques Aumont 2 006. The Fall of the Gods: Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mepris, trans. Peter Graham ( 1 990). French Film: Texts and Contexts, ed. Susan Hayward & Ginette Vincendeau. Lon don: Routledge, 1 74-88. Al ain B a d iou

2 0 1 2 . The Rebirth ofHistory: Times ofRiots and Uprisings < 2 0 1 l >, trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Antoine d e B aecque

2 0 1 0. Godard: biographie. Paris: Grasset. Mi kh ai l B a kh tin

l 984. Problems of Dostoevsky 's Poetics < l 92 9>, trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Amiri Bara ka (LeRoi Jones) 1 999· An Agony. As Now ( 1 964) . The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, ed. William H. Harris. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1 999, 5 2-5 3 . Timothy B arnard

202 2 . Decoupage (2 0 1 4). Laurent Le Forestier, Timothy Barnard & Frank Kessler, Montage, Decoupage, Mise en scene: Essays on Film Form. Montreal: caboose. Ro l an d B arth es 1 987. Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein < 1 973>, trans. Stephen Heath ( 1 9 7 7). Image-Music-Text, e d . Stephen Heath. London: Fontana, 69-78 . Georges Batai ll e l 98 5A. The Psychological Structure of Fascism < 1 9 3 3-34>, trans. Allan Stoekl . Visions ofExcess: Selected Writings, 1 92 7-1 939, ed. Allan Stoekl . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. l 985B. The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade < 1 970>, trans. Allan Stoekl. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1 92 7-1 939, ed. Allan Stoekl. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2 0 1 2 . L'Amour d'un etre mortel ( 1 95 l ) . Paris: Rue des Cascades. C h arl es Bau d elaire 2 0 1 2 . Correlatives < 1 85 7>, trans. Wallace Fowlie ( 1 96 1 ) . The Flowers of Evil. The Complete Verse. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 67. An d re Bazin 202 2 A. Ontology of the Photographic Image < 1 945>, trans. Timothy Barnard (1 009). The Andre Bazin Reader. Montreal: caboose, 9-1 6. 2 0 2 2 B . Espoir: On Style in the Cinema < 1 945>, trans. Timothy Barnard (20 1 8). The Andre Bazin Reader. Montreal, caboose, 1 7-29. 202 2 c. William Wyler, the Jansenist of Mise en scene < 1 948>, trans. Timothy Barnard (2009). The Andre Bazin Reader. Montreal: caboose, 8 3 - 1 08. 202 2 0 . Assembly Prohibited < 1 956>, trans. Timothy Barnard (20 1 8). The Andre Bazin Reader. Montreal : caboose, 42 5-3 2 . 202 2E. On the 'Politique des auteurs' < 1 957>, trans. Timothy Barnard (2 0 1 8). The Andre Bazin Reader. Montreal: caboose, 4 3 3-49. Simone d e Beauvoir

1 999· America Day by Day < 1 948>, trans. Carol Cosman. Berkeley: University of California Press. S amue l Beckett

2 006A. Molloy < 1 95 1 >, trans. Patrick Bowles. Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition, vol. 2 , ed. Paul Auster. New York: Grove. l - 1 70.

W O R K S C O N S U LTED

2 006B. Texts fo r Nothing ( 1 962). Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition, vol. 4, ed. Paul Auster. New York: Grove. 2 9 5-3 3 9. 2006c. Enough < 1 966>, trans. Samuel Beckett. Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition, vol. 4, ed. Paul Auster. New York: Grove. 365-70.

Raymond Bellour 1 996. The Double Helix < 1 990>, trans. James Eddy. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, ed. Timothy Druckrey. New York: Aperture, l 7 3-99. Walter Benjamin 1 987. A Short Speech on Proust < 1 9 3 2 >. Excerpted in Miriam Hansen, Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology, New German Critique 40 (Winter), 1 79-2 24. 1 999· The Arcades Project < 1 98 2 >, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2 004. Dostoevsky's The Idiot < 1 9 1 7lz 1 >, trans. Rodney Livingstone. Selected Writings, vol. l , ed. Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 7 8-8 r .

Bernard Berenson 1 894. The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance. New York: G.F. Putnam's Sons. Alain Bergala l 992 . The Other Side of the Bouquet, trans. Lynne Kirby. Jean-Luc Godard: Son + Image 1 9 74-1 991 , ed. Raymond Bellour & Mary Lea Bandy. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 5 7-7 3 . Henri B ergson

1 988. Matter and Memoiy < 1 896>, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul & W Scott Palmer ( 1 9 1 l ) . New York: Zone Books.

Stig Bjorkman 1 99 5 · Woody Allen on Woody Allen. London: Faber and Faber. Maurice Blanchot l 94 r . Le Secret de Melville. Journal des debats, l-2 September, 3 . l 98 l . De Kafka a Kafka. Paris: Gallimard. l 997. Friendship < l 97 l >, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford : Stanford University Press.

Frederic Bonnaud 2 003 . In His New Video Essay Godard Rediscovers the Joy of Being Swiss. Film Comment (September-October), 1 4-1 5 . Scott A. Boorman l 969. The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch 'i Interpretation ofMaoist Revolutionaiy Strategy. New York: Oxford University Press. Jorge Luis Borges 1 964- Other Inquisitions 1937-1 952 < 1 95 2 >, trans. Ruth L.C. Simms. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard wooA. A Defence of Bouvard and Pecuchet < 1 954>, trans. Esther Allen. Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger. New York: Penguin, 3 86-89. woos. This Craft of Verse, ed. Calin-Andrei Mihailescu. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Elizabeth Bowen 1 948. Elizabeth Bowen's Book Reviews. Tatler and Bystander, 2 8 April, l 1 8- 1 9.

Robert Bresson 2 0 1 6A. Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1 943-1 983 < 20 1 3 > , trans. Anna Moschovakis, ed. Mylene Bresson. New York: New York Review Books. 2 0 1 6B . Notes on the Cinematograph < 1 975>, trans. Jonathan Griffin ( 1 986). New York: New York Review Books.

Richard Brody 2 008. Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life ofJean-Luc Godard. New York: Holt.

Charles Bukowski 1 98 9 . Hollywood: A Novel. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press. 1 999· Letter to Gerald Locklin (2 August 1 98 1 ) . Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters, 1 9 78-1 994, ed. Seamus Cooney. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 2 8-3 r .

Kent E. Carroll 1 97 2 . Film and Revolution: Interview with the Dziga Vertov Group ( 1 970). Focus on Godard, ed. Royal S . Brown. Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 50-64.

Claude Chabrol & Eric Rohmer 1 99 2 . Hitchcock: The First Forty-four Films < 1 957>, trans. Stanley Hochman ( 1 979). New York: Frederick Ungar.

Ronald ]. Christ 1 969. The Narrow Act: Borges' Art ofAllusion. New York: New York University Press.

Michel Ciment 2 009. Film World: Interviews with Cinema 's Leading Directors < wo p, trans. Julie Rose. New York: Berg.

Jean Clay 1 964. Jean-Luc Godard: The French Cinema's Most Negative Asset < 1 96 p . Realities l 5 8 Oanuary), 40--4+

Jean Cocteau 1 92 r . Cock and Harlequin < 1 9 1 8>, trans. Rollo H. Meyers. London: The Egoist Press. 2 003 . The Miscreant < 1 92 p, trans. Dorothy H. Williams ( 1 9 5 8) . London: Peter Owen.

WORKS C O N S ULTED

Annabelle Cone 2 0 1 l . Strange Encounters during Wartime: Becassine chez les Tures. European Comic Art 4, no. 2 Ouly), 1 8 1 -97.

Edgardo Cozarinsky 1 98 8 . Borges inland/on Film < 1 9 74/8 1 >, trans. Gloria Waldman & Ronald Christ. New York: Lumen. 2 005 . Discourse and History: One Man's War-An Interview with Edgardo Cozarinsky ( 1 98 3 ) . Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Anrsterdam: Anrsterdam University Press, 3 9 5-406.

Maurice Darmon 2 0 1 l . La Questionjuive de Jean-Luc Godard: Filmer apres Auschwitz. Mazeres: Le Temps qu'il fait.

Mahmoud Darwish 2 007. A State of Seige < 2 00 2 > , trans. Fady Joudah. The Butterfly 's Burden. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press. 2 0 1 2 . Exile Is So Strong within Me, I May Bring It to the Land (interview) < 1 996>, trans. Adam Yale Stern. Journal of Palestinian Studies l , no. 42 (Autumn), 46-70.

Gilles Deleuze 1 989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image < 1 98 p , trans. Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta. London: Athlone.

Rene D escartes 1 98+ Meditations on First Philosophy < 1 64 1 >, trans. John Cottingham. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol . 2 . New York: Cambridge University Press. l 98 5 .

Principles ofPhilosophy < l 644>, trans. John Cottingham. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. l . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jean Domarchi 1 98 5 . Knife in the Wound < 1 956>, trans. Diana Matias. Cahiers du Cinema. The 1 9 5 0s: Neo-Realisnz, Hollywood, New Wave, ed. Jim Hillier. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2 3 5-47 .

Peter Donaldson 1 990. Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Jean-Luc Douin 2 0 r o. Jean-Luc Godard: Dictionnaire des passions. Paris: Stock. Marguerite Duras 1 984. La Photo absolue. Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe: lnstitut Memoires

de !' E dition Contemporaine (unpublished). 1 990. Green Eyes < 1 980>, trans. Carol Barko. New York: Columbia University Press. 1 99 2 . North China Lover < 1 99 1 >, trans. Leigh Hafrey. New York: New Press.

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Marguerite Duras & Jean-Luc Go d ard 2 0 1 4. Dialogues, ed. Cyril Beghin. Paris: Post- E ditions. Marguerite Duras & Mich e ll e Porte 1 97 7 · Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras. Paris: Minuit. Re b ecca Dyer & Franc;;o is Mu l o t 2 0 1 4. Mahmoud Darwish in Film: Politics, Representation and Translation in Jean-Luc Godard's lei et ailleurs and Notre Musique. Cultural Politics I O , no. 2 , 70--9 1 . Sergei Eisenstein 202 I . Mise enjeu and Mise en geste < 1 948>, trans. Sergey Levchin ( 2 0 1 4) . Montreal: caboose. Paul E l uard 2 006A. Notre mouvement/Our Movement < 1 947>, trans. Marilyn Kallet. Last Love Poems of Paul Eluard, ed. Marilyn Kallet. Boston: Black Widow, 64-65 . Wi ll iam Faulkn er 1 994· Requiem for a Nun ( 1 9 5 1 ) . Novels, 1 942-1954: Go Down, Moses; Intruder in the Dust; Requiem for a Nun; A Fable, ed. Noel Polk & Joseph Blotner. New York: Library of America, 47 1-664. E l ie Faure 2 0 r n. Introduction a la mystique du cinema ( 1 9 34). Cinema. Houilles: Manucius, 7 1-95 . Henri Foci ll on 1 992 . The Life ofForms in Art < 1 9 34>, trans. Charles B. Hogan & George Kubler. New York: Zone. Brigitte Friang 1 97 7 · Un Autre Malraux. Paris: Pion. Carl o Gin zb urg 1 980. Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method. History Workshop 9 (Spring), 5-3 6. Jean-Luc Go d ard 1 96 1 . Le Petit Soldat (film script) . Cahiers du Cinema l 1 9 (May 1 96 1 ), 2 3-3 7 . 1 966. One or Two Things < 1 966>. Sight and Sound 3 6 , n o . l (Winter), 2-6. 1 980. Se vivre, se voir (interview). Le Monde, 3 0 March 1 980. l 986A. Towards a Political Cinema < 1 950>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 9 7 2 ) . Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 1 6- 1 7 . l 986B. Strangers on a Train < 1 95 2 > , trans. Tom Milne ( 1 9 7 2 ) . Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 2-26. l 986c. The Lieutenant Wore Skirts; Artists and Models < 1 956>, trans. Tom Milne ( l 97 2 ). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 3 5-3 6. 1 9860. Montage, My Fine Care < 1 956>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 9 7 2 ) . Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 3 9-4 1 .

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l 986E. Future, Present, Past: Magirama < 1 95 7>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 41-4 3 . l 986F. Dictionary o f French Filmmakers < 1 95 7>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, e d . Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 47-48. l 986G. The T-Vrong Man < 1 95 7>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 48-5 5 . l 986H. Summer with Monika < 1 958>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 84-8 5 . 1 9861. Take Your Own Tours < 1 959>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 1 07- 1 6 . l 986J . Tarawa Beachhead < 1 959>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard o n Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, l 50-5 r . l 986K. Interview with Jean-Luc Godard < 1 96 2 >, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, e d . Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 1 7 1 -96. l 986L. Les Carabiniers under Fire (interview) < l 96p, trans. Tom Milne ( l 972 ) . Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 1 96-200. l 986M. Le Mepris < 1 96p, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 200- r . 1 986:\'. Dictionary o f American Filmmakers < 1 963-64>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godai·d on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 0 1 -4. 1 9860. Pien·ot My Friend < 1 96p, trans. Tom Milne. Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 1 3- 1 5 . l 986r. Let's Talk about Pim-at (interview) < 1 96p, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, e d . Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 l 5-34. l 986Q. Speech Delivered at the Cinematheque Franr;aise < 1 966>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 34-3 7 . l 986R. One Should Put Everything into a Film < 1 967>, trans. Tom Milne ( 1 97 2). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo, 2 3 8-39. l 986s. Struggling on Two Fronts (interview) < 1 967>, trans. Diana Matias. Cahiers du Cinema, 1 9 60-1 9 68: New Wave, New Cinema, Re-evaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim Hillier. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2 94-99. 1 990. Comme un poisson cl a ns l'eau (interview). Telerama 2 1 07 (30 May), 2 9 . l 998A. Histoire(s) du cinema, 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard/Gaumont. l 998B. Joseph Mankiewicz, La Maison des etrangers (House of Strangers) ( 1 950). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . l. Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 7 1 -7 2 . l 998c. Suprematie du sujet ( 1 9 5 2 ) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. l . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 77-80.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard l 9980. Defense et illustration du decoupage classique ( 1 9 5 2 ). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 80-84. l 998E. Jean Renoir ( 1 9 5 7) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, l 1 6- 1 9 . l 998F. L e Conquerant solitaire ( 1 959) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, l 72-7+ l 998G. Un Cineaste c'est aussi un missionaire ( 1 959) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1 8 7-90. l 998H. India ( 1 959) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1 99· l 998r. Montparnasse-Levallois ( 1 965). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 2 5 8-59. l 998J. Mots qui se croisent + Rebus = Cinema Done ( 1 966) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 2 84-8 5 . l 998K. Lettre au Ministre d e l a 'Kultur' ( 1 966). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 2 8 5-86. l 998L. Trois mille heures de cinema ( 1 966). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 2 9 1 -9 5 . l 998M. Lutter sur deux fronts (interview) ( 1 967) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 302-2 7. l 998N. Deux heures avec Jean-Luc Godard (interview) ( 1 969) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 3 3 2-3 7. 1 9980. La Chance de repartir pour u n tour ( 1 980). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 407- 1 2 . l 998P. The Story ( 1 980) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 4 1 8-4 r . l 998Q. L'Art a partir d e l a vie (interview) ( 1 985).Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 9-24. l 998R. Textes pour servir aux Histoire(s) du cinema (n.d.). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1 8 3-8+ l 998s. La Guerre et la paix (interview) ( 1 985) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 7 7-84. l 998T. Histoire(s) du cinema: Godard fait des histoires (interview) ( 1 989) . Jean­ Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, l 6 1-8 r . l 998u. Le Cine-fils ( 1 99 2 ) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 2 5 2 . l 998v. J'ai toujours pense que l e cinema etait un instrument d e pensee (press conference) ( 1 998). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 3 00-4. l 998w. Les Livres et moi (interview) ( 1 997) . Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 43 2-46. l 998x. Une Boucle bouclee (interview). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 9-4 r . 1 999· Des Traces du cinema (interview). Positif 456 (February), 50-5 7. 2004. Collages de France. Cahiers du Cinema 590 (May), 1 9.

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371

2 006A. Presentation de La Chinoise pour le Festival d'Avignon ( 1 967).Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, ed. Nicole Brenez et al. Paris: Centre Pompidou , 88. 2 006B. Moi , je (film script) ( 1 973). Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, e d . Nicole Brenez et al. Paris: Centre Pompidou , 1 95-243 . 2 006c. ABCD . . JLG ( 1 987) . Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, ed. Nicole Brenez et al. Paris: Centre Pompidou , 3 2 8-3 0. 2 0 1 0A. II y a tres peu de bonnes biographies , surtout de personnes vivantes (interview). Edwy Plenel , Ludovic Lamant & Sylvain Bourmeau , Jean-Luc Godard en liberte (film). Paris: Mediapart , https://www. mediapart.fr/ journal/culture-idees/ r 3 0 5 l o/il-y-tres-peu-de-bonnes-biographies-sur tout-de-personnes-vivantes? onglet=full 2 0 1 0B. Le droit d'auteur? Un auteur n'a que des devoirs (interview). Les Inrockuptibles, l 8 May. 2 0 1 0c. Everything or Nothing #1 (interview with Christian Jungen) , trans. Frederik Lang. Landscape Suicide, November 2 0 1 0. https://landscapesuicide. blogspot.com/ 2 0 l o/ l ll everything-or-nothing-2 .html 2 0 1 00. Film Socialisme: Dialogues avec visages auteurs. Paris: P.O.L. 2 0 1 4. Introduction to a True Histo1y of Cinema and Television < 1 980>, trans. Timothy Barnard. Montreal: caboose. 202 2. JLG/JLG et autres textes. Paris: P.O.L. .

Jean-Luc Go d ard & Regis D e b ray 1 998 . Jean-Luc Godard rencontre Regis Debray (dialogue) ( 1 995). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 2 . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema , 42 3-3 l . Jean-Luc Go d ard & Jean Douch et 2 0 1 0. Jean-Luc Godard avec Jean Douchet (interview). Ensemble et separes­ Sept rendez-vous avec Jean-Luc Godard. Alain Fleischer, Marceaux de conversations avec Jean-Luc Godard (film). Paris: Montparnasse. Jean-Luc Go d ar d & Jean-Pierre Gorin l 998A. Enquete sur une image ( 1 972). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema , 3 50-6 2 . l 998B. Pourquoi tout va b ien? (interview) ( 1 97 2 ). Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol . r . Paris: Cahiers du Cinema , 3 67-7 5 . J ean-Luc Go d ard & Yousse f ls h agh pour 2 005 . The Archaeology ofFilm and the Memory of a Century < 2 000>, trans. John Howe. Oxford: Berg. Jean-Luc Go d ar d & Mach a Meri ! l 965 . Journal d'une femme mariee (film-novel). Paris: Denoel. Jean-Luc Go d ard & Jean-Henri Roger 1 9 7 2 . Pravda (bande paroles). Cahiers du Cinema 240 Quly-August) , 1 9-3 0. Jean-Luc Go d ard & Jean-Pau l S avignac 2 0 1 8 . Figaropravda (mock newspaper) ( 1 965). Contrebandes Godard 1 9 60-1 9 68, ed. Pierre Pinchon. Montreuil: Matiere , 2 l 9-2 2 .

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Jean-Luc Go d ar d & Step h ane Zagd anski 2 00+ Cinema et Litterature , segment 3 3 , Juifs extermines , suicidaires palestiniens (interview) . Parole des }ours, 4 November, http:// parolesdesjours.free.fr/gozag.htm. E.H. Gom b rich 1 963 . Andre Malraux and the Crisis of Expressionism ( 1 9 54). Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory ofArt. London: Phaidon, 78-85 . Jean-Pierre Gorin 2 005 . A Friend of Glauber (and Godard) (interview). Grupo Dziga Vertov/Dz iga Vertov Group, ed. Jane de Almeida. Sao Paulo: Witz, 48-5+ Alfre d Guzzetti l 98 l . Two or Three Things I Know about Her: Analysis ofa Film by Godard. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kevin J. Hayes 2 000A. Bookcover as lntertitle in the Cinema ofJean-Luc Godard. Visible Language 34, no. l , 1 4-3 3 . 2 000B. Une Femme est une femme: A Modern Woman's Bookshelf. Film Criticism 2 5 (Autumn) , 65-8 2 . 2 00 1 A. Balzac among the Mo d erns. Tamkang Review 2 l -2 2 (Summer­ Autumn) , 2 47-6 1 . 2 00 I B. The Newspaper and the Novel i n A bout de souffie. Studies in French Cinema l , no. 3 , 1 8 3-9 1 . 2 002A. Godard's Comment fa va: From Information Theory to Genetics. Cinema Journal 41 (Winter) , 67-8 3 . 2 002 ll. JLGIJLG-Autoportrait de decembre: Reinscribing the Book. Quarterly Review ofFilm and Video 1 9 (April-June) , 1 5 5-6+ 2 004. The Book as Motif in One Plus One. Studies in French Cinema 4, no. 3 , 2 1 9-2 8 . 2 008. Sam Peckinpah: Interviews, e d . Kevin ]. Hayes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2 009. Edgar Allan Poe. London: Reaktion. 2 0 1 I . Nam-Bok and the New Wave; or, How Jean-Luc Godard Read Jack London. The Call (Spring-Summer) , 3-6. 2 0 1 7 . Herman Melville. London: Reaktion. G.WF. Hege l 1 96 7 . Hegel's Philosophy ofRight < l 8 2 l > , trans. T.M. Knox ( 1 9 5 2). Oxford : Oxford University Press. Martin Hei d egger 1 998. Letter on 'Humanism' < 1 946>, trans. Frank A. Capuzzi & ]. Glenn Gray. Pathmarks, ed. William McNeil!. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2 0 l 2 . Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) < l 989> , trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Miriam Heywoo d

2 0 1 2 . Modernist Visions: Marcel Proust 's A la recherche du temps perdu and Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema. Bern: Peter Lang.

Les l ie Hi ll 2 00+ A Form that Thinks: Godard, Blanchot , Citation. For Ever Godard, ed. Michael Temple , James S . Williams & Michael Witt. London : Black Dog,

3 96-4 1 5 . Junji Hori 2007. Godard's Two Historiographies. For Ever Godard, ed. Michael Temple , James Williams & Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 3 3 4-49. 2 0 1 4. Godard , Spielberg, the Muselmann and the Concentration Camps. The Legacies ofJean-Luc Godard, ed. Douglas Morrey, Christina Stojanova & Nicole Cote. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press , 67-79. C h arl es Ju l iet

2009. Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde < 1 986>, trans. Tracy Cooke & Axel Nesme. Champaign , IL: Dalkey Archive Press. Al ice Kap l an

2000. The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jam es Kirku p 1 996. Obituary: Robert Benayoun. The Independent, 9 November, 1 8 .

T. J e fferson Kl ine

2 0 1 4. Bande (�) a part: Godard's Contraband Poetry. A Companion to Jean-Luc Godard, ed. Tom Conley & T. Jefferson Kline. Malden , MA: Wiley­ Blackwell , l 7 l -86. Hub ert Knapp

1 965 . Jean-Luc Godard ou Le cinema au deft (film). Paris: Office de Radiodiffusion-Television Franc;aise. Ro b ert P h i ll ip Ko lker 1 9 7 3 · Angle and Reality: Godard and Gorin in America. Sight and Sound 42, n o . 3 (Summer) , 1 30-3 3 . Alfre d Korzyb ski

2000. Science and Sanity: An lntrnduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics ( l 93 3). Brooklyn: Institute of General Semantics. J o h n Krei dl

1 980. Jean-Luc Godard. Boston: Twayne. Inge Kutt l 98 r . Horace (Stanley) McCoy. American Novelists, 1 9 1 0-1 94 5 , ed. James ]. Martine. Detroit: Gale , 2 00-8.

3 74

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

An d re S. La b arth e & Ro b ert Va l ey 2 003 . La Nouvelle Vague par elle-meme (film) ( 1 964). Rialto. Bernard Lamarch e-Va d e l 1 99 7 . Bernard Lamarche- Vadel: Entretiens, temoignages, critiques, ed. Isabelle Rabineau. Paris: Editions Mereal. Henri Langl ois 2 0 1 4A. Jean Epstein ( 1 9 5 3) . Ecrits de cinema (J 931-1 977), ed. Bernard Benoliel & Bernard Eisenschitz. Paris: Flammarion, 3 3 5-63 . 2 0 1 4B . Le Septieme Ciel ( 1 974), interview with Rui Nogueira. Ecrits de cinema (1 931-1 977), ed. Bernard Benoliel & Bernard Eisenschitz. Paris: Flammarion, 7 3 8-5 2 . He l ene Laroch e D avis 1 99 3 . Reminiscing a bout Shoot the Piano Player: An Interview with Frarn;:ois Truffaut. Cineaste 1 9, no. 4, 3 0-3 3 . San d ra Laugier 1 99 3 . The Holy Family. Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary: Women and the Sacred in Film, ed. Marye! Locke & Charles Warren. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2 7-3 8 . Maurice A. Lee 2 004 . The Aesthetics ofLeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka: The Rebel Poet. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. Maurice Lemay 1 94 8 . Romans policiers. Combat, 2 1 September, 2 . Ju l ia Lesage 1 979. Jean-Luc Godard: A Guide to References and Resources. Boston: G.K. Hall. 1 98 3 . Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1 96 7 - 1 9 7 2 . Jump Cut 2 8 , 5 1 -58. Emmanue l Levinas 1 997 . The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights < 1 975 >, trans. Sean Hand. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1 5 1-5 3 . Co l in MacCa b e 2 003 . Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Jessica M. Maerz 2 004. Godard's King Lear: Referents Provided upon Request. Literature/Film Quarterly 3 2 , no. 2 , r n8- 1 1 . An d re Ma l raux 1 93 6 . The Cultural Heritage < 1 9 3 6>, trans. Malcom Cowley. New Republic, 2 1 October, 3 1 5- 1 7 . 1 956. The Voices of Silence < 1 95 1 >, trans. S tuart Gilbert ( 1 9 5 3). Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

W O R K S C O N S U LTED

375

1 976. Inauguration de !'exposition 'Andre Malraux et le musee imaginaire'. Le Miroir des limbes. Paris: Gallimard , 9 3 2-49. 1 9 8 3 . Une Lettre d'Andre Malraux ( 1 946). Andre Bazin , Le Cinema franfais de la Liberation a la Nouvelle Vtzgue (1 94 5-1 9 5 8) , ed. Jean Narboni. Paris: Cahiers du Cinema/E ditions de l' E toile , 1 6 5-66.

Mao Zedong 2 007 . On Contradiction < 1 9 3 7>. On Practice and Contradiction. London: Verso , 67- 1 0 2 . Huguette Marquand Ferreux l 99 r . Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois, 3 vols. Paris: Maeght , l 99 r . Jean-Jacques Mayoux 1 960. Melville < 1 9 5 8>, trans. John Ashbery. New York: Grove Press. Mark McKinney 2 0 1 r . The Colonial Heritage of French Comics. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Michael Metschies 1 997· La Citation et !'art de citer dans les Essais de Montaigne < 1 966>, trans. Jules Brody. Paris: Honore Champion.

Ann Miller 2004. Les heritiers d'Herge: The Figure of the Aventurier in a Postcolonial Context. Shifting Frontiers ofPrance and Francophonie, ed. Yvette Rocheron & Christopher Rolfe. Bern: Peter Lang, 3 07-2 3 . Tom Milne 1 986. Commentary ( 1 972). Godard on Godard, ed. Jean Narboni & Tom Milne. New York: Da Capo , 2 44-8 2 .

Michel d e Montaigne 200+ The Complete Essays < 1 5 80>, trans. & ed. M.A. Screech ( 1 987). London: Penguin.

Giovanni Morelli l 892 . Italian Painters: Critical Studies of Their Works, 2 vols. < l 890-9 1 >, trans. Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes. London: John Murray.

Douglas Morrey 2 005 . Jean-Luc Godard. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Drew Morton 2 009. Godard's Comic Strip Mise-en-Scene. Senses of Cinema 5 3 (December). https://www. sensesofcinema.com/2 009/feature-articles/ godards-comic-stri p-mise-en-scene/.

Michel Mourlet 2 0 1 r . L'Affaire Godard-Bazin. L'Ecran eblouissant: Voyages en cinephilie (1 9 5 8-201 0) . Paris: Presses universitaires de France , 2 0 1 - 5 .

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard William Murray 2 008. Playboy Interview: Sam Pelcinpah ( 1 97 2 ) . Sam Peckinpah: Interviews, ed. Kevin ]. Hayes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Musee d'art moderne Ville de Paris [ l 9 5 5 ] . 300 Annees de cinematographie. 60 Ans de cinema. Paris: Cinematheque frarn;; a ise/Federation Internationale des Archives du Film.

Glenn Myrent & Georges P. Langlois 1 99 5 · Henri Langlois: First Citizen of Cinema < 1 986>, trans. Lisa Nesselson. New York: Twayne.

Mark Nicholls 20 1 3 . From Divestment to Due Resolution: King Lear and the New York Fabulists 1 989- 1 992 . Journal of Film and Video 65 (Autumn), 3-1 3 .

Michael O'Dwyer 1 998. Georgia History in Fiction: The Quest for Identity in the Civil War Novels of]ulien Green. The Georgia Historical Quarter91 8 3 , no. 3 (Autumn), 5 7 5-9 3 .

Blaise Pascal 2 003 . Pensees < 1 670>, trans. W.F. Trotter ( 1 93 1 ) . Mineola, NY: Dover. Pier Paolo Pasolini l 98 l .

Godard < l 97 l >, trans. Bernard Mangiante. Cahiers du Cinema special issue, Pasolini Cineaste, 2 7-2 8 .

Charles Peguy 1 99 2 . Notre jeunesse ( 1 909) . Oeuvres en prnse completes, vol. 3 , ed. Robert Burac. Paris: Gallimard, 5-1 5 9.

Pierre Pinchon

2 0 1 8 . Bandes/Contrebandes. Contrebandes Godard 1 960-1 968, ed. Pierre Pinchon. Montreuil: Matiere.

Ezra Pound 20o r . Ezra Pound Reads (audio recording) ( 1 960) . New York: HarperCollins.

Thomas Pynchon 1 960. Entropy. Kenyon Review 2 2 (Spring), 2 77-9 2 . Pierre Reverdy

20 r o. L'Image ( l 9 1 8 ) . Oeuvres completes, vol . l , ed. E tienne-Alain Hubert. Paris: Flammarion, 49 5-96.

Alessia Ricciardi 20o r . Cinema Regained: Godard between Proust and Benjamin. Modernism/ modernity 8, no. 4 (November), 643-6 r .

Jacques Rivette

2 0 1 8A. A la Cinematheque tous !es soirs: L' Age d'or allemand ( 1 956 ) . Textes Critiques, ed. Miguel Armas & Luc Chessel. Paris: Post- E ditions, 1 45-47.

3 77

WORKS C O N S ULTED

2 0 1 8 B. Bio-filmographie de Jean Renoir ( 1 9 5 7). Textes Critiques, ed. Miguel Armas & Luc Chessel. Paris: Post- E ditions , 1 84-89.

Paul Robichaud 2 002 . Pierre Reverdy. Modern French Poets, ed. Jean-Francois Leroux. Detroit: Gale , 366-n

Glauber Rocha 2 0 1 9 . Tricontinental < 1 967> , trans. Stephanie Dennison et al. On Cinema, ed. Ismail Xavier. London: I.B.Tauris , 5 l -5 8 .

Eric Rohmer 1 95 6 . Les Lecteurs des Cahiers et la politique des auteurs. Cahiers du Cinema 6 3 (October), 54-5 8 . 1 960. Editorial (unsigned). Cahiers du Cinema l 1 4 (December) , 2 . 2 0 r o . L e Celluloid e t le marbre ( 1 9 5 5) . Paris: Leo Scheer.

Marie-Claire Ropars-Weilleumier 1 96 7 . La Forme et le fond , 5 7-6 1 , 1 7-34-

OU

les avatars du recit. Etudes cinematographiques

Jonathan Rosenbaum 2 004. Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Roberto Rossellini l 995A. Ten Years of Cinema < r 9 5 5>, trans. Annapaola Cancogni. My Method: Wi·itings and Interviews < 1 987> , ed. Adriano Apra. New York: Marsilio , 5 877l 995B. Interview with Jean Domarchi , Jean Douchet and Ferydoun Hoveyda < 1 96 2 > , trans. Annapaola Cancogni. A1y Method: Writings and Interviews < 1 987> , ed. Adriano Apra. New York: Marsilio , l 2 3-3 7 . l 995c. Interview with Fereydoun Hoveyda and Eric Rohmer < 1 96p , trans. Annapaola Cancogni . My Method: Writings and Interviews < 1 987> , ed. Adriano Apra. New York: Marsilio , l 3 8-5 2 .

Patrick Rotman 2 00 2 . L'Ennemi intime (film). Paris: France TV Distribution. Richard Roud 1 970. Godard ( 1 967). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1 980. Jean-Luc Godard. Cinema: A Critical Dictionmy, vol. l , ed. Richard Roud. London: Martin , Secker and Warburg , 436-46. 1 98 3 . A Passion for Films: Henri Langlois and the Cinematheque Franraise. New York: Viking.

David Rubinstein 1 967 . Ideology and Industry. Tribune,

I

September, r o .

Christian Salmon 1 984. Milan Kundera : The Art of Fiction (interview). The Paris Review 92 (Summer) , 1 06-2 3 .

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Elias Sanbar 1 99 1 . Vingt et un ans apres. Trafic l ( 1 99 1 ) , 1 09- 1 9.

Yezid Sayigh l 999. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1 949-1 993 ( 1 997). New York & Washington: Oxford University Press/Institute for Palestine Studies.

Jeremy Scott 1 948 . Time to Kill. Tribune, 3 0 April , 2 9-30.

Christopher Sharrett 1 984. The Look of Buster Keaton. Film Quarterly 3 7 (Summer), 54-5 5 .

David Sices 1 998. Alfred de Musset. French Dramatists, 1 789-1 914, ed. Barbara T. Cooper. Detroit: Gale , 2 63-7 7 .

Kaja Silverman & Harun Farocki 1 99 8 . Speaking about Godard. New York: New York University Press. Gavin Smith 1 996. Jean-Luc Godard . Film Comment (March-April), 3 l-3 2 , 3 5-4 1 .

Susan Sontag l 968. On Godard's Vivre sa vie ( 1 964) . Jean-Luc Godard: A Critical Antholof!J!, ed. Toby Mussman. New York: Dutton , 8 7-99.

David Sterritt 1 999· The Films ofJean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richard Suchenski 2 0 1 6 . Projections ofMemory. New York: Oxford University Press. Boleslaw Sulik 1 96 3 . Escape into Fiction. Tribune, 5 July, 9.

Michael Temple 2 000. Big Rhythm and the Power of Metamorphosis: Some Models and Precursors for Histoire(s) du cinema. The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard, 198 5-2000, ed. Michael Temple & James S . Williams. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press , 7 7-95 .

Michael Temple & James S . Williams 2 000. Introduction to the Mysteries of Cinema. The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work ofJean-Luc Godard, 198 5-2000, ed. Michael Temple & James S . Williams. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press , 9-3 2 .

Robert S . Thornberry l 9 7 7 . Andre Malraux et l'Espagne. Geneva: Droz.

WO R K S C O N S U L T E D

3 79

Frani;ois Tru ffaut 1 9 5 5 · Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs' . Cahiers du Cinema 44 (February), 45-47. John Updike 1 9 8 3 . Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism. New York: Knopf. Paul Va le ry l 962A. The Crisis of the Mind < 1 9 1 9>, trans. Denise Folliot & Jackson Mathews. History and Politics. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 2 3-36. l 96 2 B . A Fond Note on Myth < 1 92 8>, trans. Denise Folliot & Jackson Mathews. History and Politics. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 3 7-45 . 1 964- The Conquest o f Ubiquity < 1 928>, trans. Ralph Manheim. Aesthetics. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 2 2 5-2 8. Jan Verwoert 2006. Apropos Appropriation: Why Stealing Images Today Feels Different. Tate Triennial, ed. Beatrix Ruf & Clarrie Wallis. London: Tate Publishing,

1 4-2 l .

Gore Vidal 1 9 5 3 · Disaster and Flight. New York Times Book Review, 22 March, 6. Simone Weil 2 00 2 . La Condition ouvriere ( 1 9 5 1). Paris: Gallimard. Armond White 1 996. Double Helix: Jean-Luc Godard . Film Comment (March-April), 2 6-30. Jerry White

2 0 1 3 . Two Bicycles: The Work ofJean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Anne Wiazemsky 2 0 1 2 . Une Annee studieuse. Paris: Gallimard. J a mes S . Williams

2 0 1 6. Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics. Albany: SUNY Press.

Michael Witt 1 999· On Gilles Deleuze on Jean-Luc Godard: An Interrogation of 'La Meth ode du Entre'. Australian Journal ofFrench Studies 3 6 a anuary), l l 0-24. 2000. L'lmage selon Godard: theorie et pratique de !'image clans !'oeuvre de Godard des annees 70 a 90. Jean-Luc Godard et le metier d'artiste, ed. Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Gilles Delavaud & Marie-Frani;oise Grange. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1 9-3 2 . 2 0 1 3 . Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1 9 5 3 · Philosophical Investigations < 1 95 3 >, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan.

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard 1 984. Culture and Value < 1 977>, trans. Peter Winch ( 1 980) , ed. G.H. von Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jean-Pierre Zara d er 1 989-90. La Pensee de !'art: Andre Malraux clans le miroir de Hegel. Revue Andre Malraux 2 , vol. 2 l , 1 65-80.

Index of Works by Jean-Luc Godard

A bout de soujfie (Breathless) France , 1 960 8-9, 46, 84, 98 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 , 1 3 7, 1 4 1-42 , 1 5 2 , 1 5 3 , 1 9 3 , 2 1 3 , 2 1 6, 2 24, 2 2 9 , 2 5 2 , 266, 2 9 8

Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) France , 2 0 1 4, video 8, 2 1 -2 2 , 64, 68 , 7 3 , 9 1 , 1 8 2-84, 2 80, 3 1 3 , 3 1 6

Allemagne 90 neuf zero: Solitudes, un itat et des variations (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero) France , 1 99 1 , film & video 1 07, 1 60, 2 0 1 -2 , 2 7 7

Alphaville: une itrange aventure de Lemmy Caution France-Italy, 1 965 24, 2 9, 65 , 7 l , 89 , 99- 1 00, 1 0 1 -3 , 1 07 , l 34-3 6, l 5 3 , 2 0 1 -2 , 2 I O , 2 3 3 , 3 l 5

Bande a part (Band of Outsiders) France-U. S.A. , 1 964 9, 2 9, 8 3-8 5 , 89 , 1 3 1 -3 3 , 1 8 5-86, 249 , 2 64, 2 66

Camira-Oeil (Camera Eye) Sketch in Farfrom Vietnam France , 1 967 1 1 7, 2 86

Les Carabiniers France-Italy, 1 963 7 1 , 7 4, 78 , 1 86, 2 2 2 , 2 3 3 , 2 90

C'itait quand France , 2 0 1 0 , short , video 289

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Charlotte et Vironique, ou Tous les garfons s'appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are Called Patrick) France , 1 959, short 2 69-7 1

La Chinoise France , 1 967 6, r o , 2 0 , 50-5 1 , 74, 1 1 6- 1 7, 1 2 2 , 1 5 8, 2 03-5 , 208, 2 8 6, 2 96

Comment fa va (with Anne-Marie Mieville) France , 1 976, film & video 3 o3-4, 3 2 0, 3 2 3 Dans le noir du temps Sketch in Ten Minutes Older: The Cello France , 2 002 , short, video 7, r r 7

De l'origine du XX!ieme siecle (Origins of the Twenty-first Century) France , 2 000 , short , video 60

Le Dernier Mot (The Last Word) Sketch in The French as Seen by .

.

.

France , 1 988 , video 63

Detective France , 1 985 84, r o7, 2 42 , 2 7 1

Deux fois cinquante ans de cinema franfais (Two Times Fifty Year.r of French Cinema) (with Anne-Marie Mieville) France , 1 995 , video 2 06 , 2 89

Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know about Her) France , 1 967 r o , 1 7- 1 9, 43 , 84-8 5 , 1 1 7, 1 42 , 1 48, r 80, 2 r 9, 2 9 r , 2 94-95 , 3 r 8

Eloge de !'amour (In Praise of Love) France-Switzerland-Germany, 2 00 1 , film & video r 5 , 34, 6 r , 64, 8 r , 2 42-43 , 3 24

Les Enfantsjouent a la Russie France , 1 99 3 , video 1 24

Une Femme coquette Switzerland , 1 95 5 , short 271

I N D E X O F W O R K S B Y J EA N - L U C G O D A R D

Une Femme est une femme (A Woman is a Woman) France , 1 96 1 84, 1 50 , 1 5 8, 1 6 5 , 2 2 8, 2 6 3 , 2 7 1

Une Femme mariee: Fragments d'un film tourne en (A Married Woman)

1 964

France , 1 964 2 9, 1 5 3 , 1 90, 2 04

Figaropravda (with Jean-Paul S avignac) Mock newspaper France , 1 965 r o3 , 1 5 3 Un Film comme les autres (A Film Like the Others) France , 1 968 l 1 4, 3 03

Film Socialisme France-Switzerland , 2 0 1 0, video 1 5- 1 6, 2 0, 2 2 , 47, 64, 9 1 , l I O , 1 3 7, 1 5 8, 1 60, 2 96, 2 98

For Ever Mozart France-Switzerland-Germany, 1 996 1 08, 2 2 9, 2 5 7-59

France tour detour deux enfants (with Anne-Marie Mievi ll e) France , 1 97 7-78 , video I I8

Le Gai Savoir France-Germany, 1 969 2 2 8, 2 84-86, 3 2 1

Le Grand Escroc (The Great Swindle) Sketch in The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers France , 1 964 2 1 5- 1 7

Grandeur e t decadence d'un petit commerce de cinema France , 1 986 , film & video 2 76

Helas pour moi (Oh, Woe is Me) (uncredited) France-Switzerland , 1 99 3 1 6, 9 1 , 1 07, 1 6 1 -63 , 2 3 3-3 5 , 2 7 3 , 2 76

Une Histoire d'eau (with Fran�ois Tru ffaut) France , 1 95 8, short 1 58

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Histoire(s) du cinema France , 1 989-98, video 7, I O, 1 5 , 3 2 , 3 3 , 3 8, 46, 48, 49, 54-55 , 5 6, 5 9 , 60 , 6 r , 62 , 63 , 64, 66-67, 68, 7 2 , 8 1-82 , 86, 88 , 1 07, r r o , r r 3 , r r 5 , r r 7 , r 2 r , 1 24, 1 2 5-26, 1 2 8-29, 1 3 7, 1 3 9, 1 42 , 1 4 3 , 1 44, 1 5 3 , 1 5 5 , 1 56, r 66, 1 74, 1 7 5 , 1 76, 1 79, 1 8 1 , 1 8 5 , 1 8 7, 1 89, 1 9 1 , 1 94, 1 96, 1 99, 202 , 208, 2 2 3 , 2 3 3 , 2 3 6, 2 3 8, 2 3 9-4 1 , 2 54-56, 2 60-62 , 2 66, 2 7 2 , 2 7 7 , 2 84, 2 9 2 , 3 09, 3 1 0, 3 1 2 , 3 2 7 Chapter IA, Toutes !es histoires , 1 989/98 3 3 , 60 , 8 1 , 1 2 5 , 1 43-44, 1 5 5-56, 1 76, 1 78, 1 8 5 , 3 2 8 Chapter l B , Une Histoire seule , 1 989/98 48, 63-64, 66-67, 8 1 , 1 1 7, 1 2 1 , 1 3 7 , 1 89, 2 84 Chapter 2A, Seu! le cinema , 1 998 3 8-3 9, 1 74 Chapter 2 B , Fatale beaute , 1 998 60 , 86, 2 6 1 -6 2 , 2 66-67 Chapter 3 A, La Monnaie de l'absolu , 1 998 r r 3-1 5 , 1 2 6, 1 99, 3 2 8 Chapter 3 B , Une Vague nouvelle , 1 998 64, 1 2 8-29, 1 7 5 , 1 79 Chapter 4A, Le Contr6le de l'univers , 1 998 1 5 , 1 44, 1 7 8 , 1 99 , 3 09, 3 1 0, 3 1 2 Chapter 4 B , Les Signes parmi nous, 1 998 46, 4 9 , 6 2 , 67, 68, 8 2 , 1 2 7, 1 7 5 , r 8 7 , 2 3 9-40, 2 54-56, 2 7 2 , 2 74, 2 76, 2 7 7

lei e t ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere) (with Anne-Marie Mieville) France , 1 976 I I O- I I , 1 2 7, 1 56, 3 r 7- r 9, 3 2 1

Je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mmy) France-Switzerland-UK. , 1 98 5 50, r r 9-2 1 , 1 2 8, 1 3 0, 1 6 7, 2 1 3 , 3 2 6

JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de decembre France , 1 994 34, 1 5 9, 1 67-69 , r 7 3 , 2 1 0- 1 r , 2 2 0 , 243-44, 2 76, 2 7 7, 2 80, 3 r 4- 1 6, 3 2 7

Journal d'une femme mariee (with Macha Meri!) Film-novel France , 1 965 153 Jusqu'a l a victoire (Metho d e d e pensee e t travai l d e l a revo l ution pa l estinienne) (unfinishe d , with Jean-Pierre Gorin) France , 1 970 78, 3 1 7

I N D E X O F W O R K S B Y J EAN - L U C G O D A R D

King Lear U.S .A. , 1 98 7/2002 5 3 , 5 7, 1 2 3 , 1 3 0, 1 3 7, 2 76, 2 99-3 0 1 , 3 2 9-3 1

Letter to Jane: An Investigation about a Still (with Jean-Pierre Gorin) France , 1 97 2 I 1 6 , 2 05

Lettre a Freddy Buache Switzerland , 1 98 2 , short , video 50

Liberti et patrie (with Anne-Marie Mievi ll e) France-Switzerland , 2 002 , short , video 2 7 2-74

Le Livre d'image (The Image Book) Switzerland-France , 2 0 1 8, video 2 2 , 95-97 , 2 5 8-59

Lotte in Italia (Struggles in Italy) (as part o f the D ziga Vertov Group) Italy-France , 1 970 79

Made in U. S.A. France , 1 966 2 7, 2 9 , 54, 1 42 , 1 5 3 , 1 65 , 1 80, 2 1 2- 1 4

Masculin Feminin: 1 5 faits precis France-Sweden , 1 966 6, 1 3 , 2 9-3 0, 5 1 , 60 , 85 , 96 , 2 84

Le Mepris (Contempt) France-Italy-US .A. , 1 963 4 1 , 46, 78, 1 9 3 , 1 97, 2 2 1-2 3 , 2 2 4- 2 6 , 2 2 9, 2 34, 2 54, 2 5 7, 2 7 1 , 2 98 , 3 1 1 , 3 1 2 , 3 1 3 Moi , Je Unrealised film script France , 1 97 3 54

Montpaniasse-Levallois Sketch in Paris vu par . . . France , 1 965 84, 1 5 8

Mouchette Trailer France , 1 967 Sr

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Notre Musique France-Switzerland , 2 004 1 5 , 40 , 64, I I O- I 2 , 1 64-66, 1 67, 1 70-7 2

Nouvelle Vague France-Switzerland , 1 990 1 60 , 2 2 9, 2 3 3 , 2 47, 2 80, 2 8 3

Numero Deux France, 1 9 7 5 , film & video 1 30

Il Nuovo Mondo S ketch in RoGoPaG Italy-France , 1 963 2 IO

The Old Place: Small Notes Regarding the Arts at Fall of 20th Century (with Anne-Marie Mieville) U.S .A. , 1 999 , short , video 60-6 1 , 64, 68-70 , 90, 268 One A.M. (unfinishe d) U.S .A. , 1 968 r o5

One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil) U.K. , 1 968 5 1 , 1 04-6 , 3 1 7

La Paresse

S ketch in Les Sept Fiches capitaux France-Italy, 1 962 47

Passion 1 98 2 64, 1 1 9, 1 2 9-3 0, 2 3 5 , 2 7 5-76, 3 2 3-2 5 L e Petit Soldat Film script with photographic illustrations France , 1 96 1 1 53

L e Petit Soldat France , 1 960/63 5-7, 8 , 9, 1 07-9, 1 2 6, 1 5 3 , 1 59-60, 1 6 5, 2 96

Petites Notes a propos du film 1e vous salue, 1Vlarie ' France , 1 98 3 , short , video 1 1 9, 1 2 8

I N D E X O F W O R K S B Y J EA N - L U C G O D A RD

Pierrot le Jou France-Italy, 1 965 6, 8, 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 5 , 2 9 , 1 2 9, 1 44, 1 49-5 1 , 1 5 2-5 3 , 1 85 , 2 00- 1 , 2 2 5 , 245-46, 2 6 3 , 2 66 , 2 7 8-80, 3 03 , 3 1 1

Pravda (with Jean-Henri Roger) France , 1 970 78-79

Prenom Carmen (First Name: Carmen) France , 1 98 3 5 3-54, 56-5 8 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 3 , 1 3 0 , 1 59, 1 6 5

Prix suisse-Remerciements-Mort o u vif Switzerland , 2 0 1 5 , short , video 57

Puissance de la parole France , 1 98 8, short , video 2 5 1 -5 3

Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Every Man for Himself/Slow Motion) France-Switzerland-Germany, 1 980 , film & video 92-94, 1 2 8-30

Scenario du film Passion France-Switzerland-UK. , 1 9 8 2 , video 3 2 3-2 5

Six fois deux (Sur et sous la communication) (with Anne-Marie Mieville) France , 1 976 , video l 54, 3 2 3 , 3 2 7

Soft and Hard: Soft Talk on a Hard Subject between Two Friends (with Anne­ Marie Mieville) U.K.-France , 1 98 5 , video 86

Soigne ta droite, ou Une Place sur la terre (Keep Your Right Up) France-Switzerland , 1 98 7 3 8, 5 3-54, 5 7, 86, 1 2 2-24 Th e S tory Unrealised film script U. S .A., 1 979 94

Tout va bien (with Jean-Pierre Gorin) France-Italy, 1 97 2 7 5-76, 78, 1 5 3 , 2 05 , 3 2 3

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Les Trois Disastres S ketch in 3x3D Portugal , 2 0 1 3 , video 20

Vent d'est ( Wind from the East) (with Jean-Pierre Gorin as the Dzi ga Vertov Group) France-Italy-Germany, 1 970 79, 2 84-86

Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live) France , 1 96 2 74, 1 7 1 , 2 1 8, 2 3 3 , 2 48-50, 2 80 , 2 9 3-95

Vladimir et Rosa (as part o f the Dziga Vertov Group) Germany, 1 9 7 1 5 7, 7 8

Voyage(s) e n utopie France , 2 006 , exhibition 50, 208

Vraifaux passeport: Fiction documentaire sur des occasions de porter unjugement a propos de la fafon de faire desfilms France , 2 006 , video 7

Week-end France-Italy, 1 967 1 1 - 1 2 , 1 9, 3 5-3 7 , 50-5 1 , 1 3 1 , 2 3 5 , 3 2 0

Film Title Index

Agatha and the Limitless Readings (Agatha et /es lectures illimitees) (Duras) r 3 0 Angels of Sin (Les Anges du peche) (Bresson) r 5 8 Apocalypse Now (Coppola) 9 3 Arabian Nights (IIfiore de/le mille e una notte) (Pasolini) 97 Artists and Models (Tashlin) 1 4 7 Aurelia Steiner (Vancouver) (Duras) 1 2 6 The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli) 2 2 3 Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin) (Eisenstein) 1 8 1 , 2 30 La Belle et la Bete (Cocteau) 1 07, 2 6 7 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Lang) 2 8 r The Big Sleep (Hawks) 99, 1 4 1 Bigger than Life (Ray) 2 89 The Birds (Hitchock) 1 98 , 1 99, p 8 Birth ofa Nation (Griffith) 3 3 Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol) (Rocha) 2 8 5 Black Panthers (Varda) 1 06 Brelan d'as (Verneuil) 1 02 The Bride of Glomdal (Glomdalsbruden) (Dreyer) 40 The Burglar (Wendkos) 1 64 Le Camion (The Lorry) (Duras) 93 Captain Blood (Flynn) 49 Celine and Julie Go Boating (Celine et Julie vont en bateau) (Rivette) 308 Change Nothing (Ne change rien) (Costa) S r The Children (Les Enfants) (Duras) 1 2 9 Chronique d'un ete (Rouch & Morin) 84 Citizen Kane (Welles) 70 City Lights (Chaplin) 94 Coasting along the Coast (Du c8te de la cote) (Varda) 9 The Crime ofMonsieur Lange (Le Crime de Monsieur Lange) (Renoir) r 89 Criss Cross (Siodmak) r 5 5 The Crowd (Vidor) r 76 Day for Night (La Nuit americaine) (Truffaut) 3 07 The Devil in the Flesh (Le Diable au corps) (Autant-Lara) 305

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard The Devil's Blast (Les Rendez-vous du diable) (Tazieff) 43 Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (Clouzot) 2 2 8 Diary of a Count1y Priest aney, Serge 3 S, 1 43 , 1 79 I>ante I I 2 , 1 64, 2 2 2 , 2 2 3 I>arc, Mirei lle l l , 3 5 I>armon, Maurice l 5 DARWISH, Mahmoud I I O-I 2 I>auman, Anatole 2 3 I>ean , J a mes 3 4 DEBORD, Guy 1 13-15 I>eCarlo, Yvonne l 5 5 I>e Gaulle, Charles 1 9 4 I>elacroix, Eugene S, 9, 7S, 2 3 5 I>e Laurentiis, I>ino 2 2 l I>eleuze, Gilles l 5 l , 240 I>elluc, Louis l S l , l S9 I>elon, Alain 2 47 I>elpy, Julie 3 S-40

NAME INDEX

Demmeny, Paul 2 80 De Niro, Robert 94 Denner, Charles 2 l 6 Depardieu, Gerard 9 1 , 1 6 1 , 1 63 , 2 34 Dern, Bruce 309 Derrida, Jacques 3 2 l DESCARTES , Rene 59, 89-9 l ' I I 6-I 8 Detmers, Maruschka 56, 1 5 9, 1 6 5 Devane, William 3 09 Diclcinson, Emily 62 Diderot, Denis 143, 1 90, 307, 3 2 7 Dietrich, Marlene 58, 1 9 1 , 249 Dieu, Nade 1 64, 1 70 Diop, Omar 204 Doillon, Jacques 1 54 DOLTO , Frarn;:oise I I9-2 r , 1 3 0 Domarchi, Jean 1 46 Donaldson, Peter 3 3 l Dort, Bernard 74-7 5 Dos Passos, John l 3 7 DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor So, I 2 2-24, l 83 Douchet, Jean 2 2 Douglas, Kirk 2 2 3 Douin, Jean-Luc 1 5 Doyle, Arthur Conan 2 8 2 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 1 8 , 40, 1 7 1 , 1 8 1 , 2 3 3 , 2 3 7, 3 1 0 Dreyfus, Alfred 2 39-40 Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre 8 Dufrene, Fram;:ois 2 80 Duhamel, Marcel r o 1 -2 Dulac, Germaine l 8 l Dumas, Alexandre 1 46, 2 59 Duport, Catherine-Isabelle 60 DURAS , Marguerite 48, 6 3 , 8 5 , 9 3 , l l 5, l 2 2 , I2 5-2 7, ! 2 8-3 0, 297 Dutronc, Jacques 9 3 , 1 2 8 Dyer, Rebecca l l l Dylan, Bob 2 5 2 Eichmann, Adolph 1 4- 1 6 Eine, Simon l 5 Eisenstein, Sergei 24, 142, 1 79, 1 8 1 , 1 89, 2 30-3 2 , 2 5 6 ELIOT, TS. 2 5 , 66, 8 9 , r3 r-3 3 , 2 54 Ellul, Jacques 2 2 , 1 8 2 Elsen, Claude 2 l l ELUARD, Paul 8, r 34-3 6 Engels, Friedrich 79 Engheim, Duke of 2 7

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Epstein, ] ean l 8 l Ernst, Max 9, 2 5 2 Fanon, Franz 286 Farocki, Hamn 3 5-3 7, 249 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 2 48-50 FAULKNER, William 34, 39, 1 2 9, 1 3 7-39 , 14 0-42 , 1 80, 1 8 5 , 1 9 1 , 2 1 2 FAURE, Elie 6 2 , 64, 143-4 5 , 1 94, 1 96, 2 2 5 , 2 46, 307 Fellini, Federico 3 2 8 Ferracci, Rene 1 0 Figon, Georges 2 1 4 Fitzgerald, F. Scott l 3 7 Flaherty, Robert 42-43, 49 FLAUBERT, Gustave 2 7, 14 6-4 8 , 2 89 Fleming, Ian 3 1 4 Flynn, Errol 49 Focillon, Henri 1 94, 1 96 Fonda, Henry p o Fonda, Jane 7 5-76, 205 Ford, Wallace 63-64 FORTON, Louis 149-5 1 , 1 5 3 Foucault, Michel I I 6, 203 Fournier, Therese 1 5 3 Fragonard, Jean-Honore 86 Frampton, Hollis 6z Francis of Assisi, saint 1 67 Freud, Sigmund 1 2 0-2 1 , 2 0 2 , 248, 2 8 2-83 Frey, Sarni 83, 1 6 1 , 1 8 5 , 2 66 Friang, Brigitte 1 95 Fuseli Henry, 3 3 l Gabin Jean, 1 1 3 Gance Abel, 24, 48 Garbo Greta, 207 Garnett, Tay 2 5 l GEBE l p-54 , 2 3 2 GENET, Jean 1 55-5 7, 2 1 5 , 2 8 8 Gerasimov, Sergei 2 3 Giacometti, Alberto 63 Ginzburg, Carlo 2 8 2-8 3 Giotto 48, 1 3 9, 3 2 8 GIRAUDOUX, Jean 9 , 1 07-8 , 1 5 8- 60 , 1 6 1 - 63 , 3 1 2 Gish, Lillian 86 Godard, Odile l 1 6, 1 9 1 , 1 94, 2 64, 2 66 Godard, Paul l 5 8 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 2 00-2 Gombrich, E.H. l 94, l 96 GOOD I S , David r 64- 66

NA M E I N D E X

41 I

(;orin, Jean-Pierre 5 7 , 7 5-76, 7 7-79, r r o, 1 1 6, 1 5 3 , 2 0 3 , 205, 2 1 9, 2 84-8 5 , 3 2 3 (;oya, Chantal 30, 96 (;oya, Franci sco 39, 1 94, 3 2 4, 1 99, 3 2 5 (;raham, Billy r o6 (;ray, Judd 2 5 2 El (;reco 1 94, 3 2 5 (;reco, Juilette 267 GREE N, Julien r 67-69 , r 70-72 (;reenaway, Peter 2 99, 3 0 1 (;reene, (;raham 2 4 3 (;riffith, D.W 1 9 1 , 207, 2 3 7 (;rumbach, Jean-Pierre see Jean-Pierre Melville (;uerre, Martin 2 34 (;uerrero, Margarita 68-70 (;uevara, Ernesto 'Che' 2 9 , 2 86 (;uitry, Sacha r 2 8 (;uzzetti, Alfred 1 48 (;ysin, Brion 2 80 Hals, Frans r 1 6 ul-Hamid, Abd see Louis d u Couret Hammett, Dashiell r o r , 1 64, 2 70 Han Yu 65 Harris, Barbara 309 Hawks, Howard 39, 99, roo, 2 2 4, 2 3 7, 303, 306 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 65, r 3 8 Hayes, Kevin ]. r 2 , 1 05 , 3 r 5 Hayworth, Rita 1 5 5 Hegel, (;eorg Wilhelm Friedrich 1 9 7, 240-4 1 , 2 69-7 1 HEIDEGGER, Martin 1 4, 1 8 3 , 1 73-75, 1 76-78 Heidseck, Bernard 2 80 Heisler, Stuart 2 66 Hemingway, Ernest 1 3 7 , 2 1 2 , 2 54, 2 70 Heredia, Jose Maria de r 34 Herge 95, 1 50 Hermann, Bernard 3 r o Heywood, Miriam 2 60 Hill, Leslie 63 Himmler, Heinrich r r 6 Hitchcock, Alfred 26, 1 78, 1 98, 1 99, 2 2 4, 2 8 7-89, 306, 308- r o, 3 1 2 , 3 2 8 Hitchens, Dolores 83-8 5 , 1 3 1 , 2 64 Hitler, Adolph 7 3 , 1 05 , 1 8 3 Holderlin, Friedrich 2 2 3 Homer 1 1 2 , 2 2 1 -2 3 , 2 34-3 5 , 2 54-5 6, 2 5 7, 2 89 Hori, Junji 1 6, 3 3 Huet, Henri-Jacques 1 08 Hughes, Howard 1 5 5-56, 1 76

412

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

l-lugo , Victor 240 l-luppert, Isabelle 9 2 , 2 7 5 , 3 2 4-2 5 l-lusserl , Edmund 1 4 l-luxley, Aldous 2 70 lrribarren, Jean-Michel 2 5 2 lshaghpour, Youssef l 2 l , 2 40 James , l-lenry 62 Jaspers , Karl 1 4 Jaures , Jean 2 3 9 Jeanson , Blandine 3 6 Jeanson , Francis 6 , 204-5, 2 96 Jesus 1 1 9-2 1 , 1 2 3 , 1 30, 2 1 6, 2 3 8, 3 24, 3 2 8 Joan of Arc 2 5 9 Joel , l-lenrietta 3 2 0 John Paul II , pope 50 Johnson , Lyndon B . 29, I I 6 Jones , LeRoi see Amiri BARAKA Joppolo , Beniamino 2 90 J ouffroy, Alain 8 5 J oukovsky, Fran�oise 90 Joyce , James 2 54, 2 5 5 Juliet, Charles 5 5 Kafka , Franz 1 5 , 5 7 , 6 2 , 6 3 , 6 5 , 66, 2 66 Kancheli , Giya 1 6 3 Kaplan , Alice 34 Kaplan , Nelly 2 4 Karina , Anna 2 7 , 54, 83-84, l oo, 1 0 3 , 1 09, 1 3 2 , 1 34, 1 40, 1 50, 1 60--6 1 , 1 7 1 , 1 8 5 ,

1 90, 2 1 2- 1 3 , 2 2 8, 245, 248, 249, 2 66, 2 7 1 , 2 78, 2 9 3 Kassovitz , Peter 2 48 Keaton , Buster 2 6, 56-5 8 Keaton , Diane 94 Kelly, Gene 1 40 Kestner, Charlotte , 2 00-2 Khemir, Nacer 97 Khodoss , Claude 2 69 Kierkegaard , Soren 65 King , Martin Luther, Jr. 2 9 Kirkup , James 5 7 Kissinger, l-lenry 3 1 9 Kleist, l-leinrich von l 5 9 Kline , T. Jefferson 8 5 Knapp , l-lubert 9 Korsch , Karl 7 7 Korzybski , Alfred 3 1 4, 3 l 5 Kosygin , Alexei l l 6 Kramer, Rony l 7 l

NAM E I N D E X

Kreidl, John 2 4 Kristeva, Julia 203 Kubrick, Stanley 1 2 , 201 Kuleshov, Lev 2 3 0 Kundera, Milan 8 7 Kurosawa, Akira l 8 0 , 2 34 Labarthe, Andre S . l 3 l , l 60 Lacan, Jacques 89, 1 1 9 La Fayette, Madame de 1 3 9 Lamarche-Vadel, Bernard 6 2 , 1 7 5 Lancaster, Burt l 5 5 Lang, Fritz 1 8, 1 78, 1 9 7 , 2 2 1-2 3 , 2 24, 2 2 5 , 2 8 1 LANGLOIS , Henri 8 2 , 8 3 , 1 79-8 1 , 1 94, 1 98, 206-8, 2 2 2 , 2 3 7, 2 8 1 Languereau, Maurice see CAUMERY Lanzmann, Claude 7, 1 2 5 , 1 2 6 Laughton, Charles 3 8-39, 3 2 8 Laugier, Sandra l 2 l Lautreamont 2 80 Leacock, Richard 2 1 6- 1 7 Leaud, Jean-Pierre 2 3 , 2 5 , 30, 74, 1 1 6, 1 5 8, 2 2 8, 2 84, 2 96 Lebel, Jean-Patrick 1 48 Leconte de Lisle l 34 Lecroix, Ghalia 2 5 7-59 Lee, Maurice A. 3 l Leigh, Janet 1 7 8 Lemay, Maurice 2 70 Lenin, Vladimir 7 7-79, l l 6 Leonardo da Vinci 95, 2 8 3 , 3 l 2 Leopardi, Giacomo 1 6 2 Lesage, Julia 1 8, 78 LEVINAS, Emmanuel 1 82-84 Levine Joseph 2 2 l Levi-Strauss, Claude 6 3 Lewin, Albert 267 Lewis, Jerry 56-5 7, 76, 1 2 3 , 1 47, 1 5 3 Linhart, Robert 9 3 Lo ca, Jean-Louis l 6 3 LONDON, Jack 1 85-87, 2 6 5 Losey, Joseph 74, 2 2 4, 247 Lubitsch, Alfred 84 Lugosi, Bela 1 4 2 , 1 80, 209 Lumiere, Auguste 48, 59 Lumiere, Louis 48, 59 Lysandre, Marie 2 7 l MacCabe, Colin 8 l Maerz, Jessica 3 00

Reading w ith Jean-Luc Godard Mailer, Kate 2 99 Mailer, Norman 2 99-300 Malcolm X 29 Mallarme, Stephane 2 So, 3 l 3 Malle, Louis 247, 2 6 3 MALRAUX, Andre 8, 39, 45-46, 6 3 , 8 2 , 88, 143, 1 45, 1 79, 1 88-9 0, l9 r-9 3,

1 94-9 6, 1 9 7-99 , 207, 208, 2 2 2 , 2 8 3 , 288, 307, 3 1 1 - 1 2

Manet, E douard 3 2 8 Mangano, Silvana 2 2 l Mankiewicz, Joseph 8 5 Mann, Anthony 64 MANN, Thomas 86, 200-2 MAO Zedong 1 9, 20, 76, 79, 1 2 2 , 2 03-5, 2 1 9, 2 96 Marcorelles, Louis 74 Marivaux, Pierre de 1 6 1 , 2 2 9 Marker, Chris 78, 2 04 Marowitz, Charles 3 0 1 MARQUAND FERREUX, Huguette 2 0 6-8 Martin, Dean 147 Martin, Marcel 2 3 0 Marx, Groucho l 6 l Marx, Karl 3 3 , 3 5 , 77-79, l 1 4, r 1 6, 204 Masliah, Laurence 1 6 3 Masson, Andre 3 5 MATHESON, Richard 209-r I , 243, 3 1 5 Matisse, Henri l 3 9 Mayoux, Jacques 2 1 5 Maysles, Albert 84 McCOY, Horace 1 0 2 , 2 r 2-r4 McKinney, Mark 96 Melot. Jacques 2 30 MELVILLE, Herman 2 I 5 -r7 Melville. Jean-Pierre 2 1 5 , 2 1 6 Meredith, Burgess 2 99 Meri!, Macha l 5 3 Metschies, Michael 90 Metz, Christian 2 3 l , 2 3 6, 2 3 8 Michelangelo 1 98, 2 8 3 Michelsen, Claudia 202 Mieville, Anne-Marie 60, 64, 68-70, 86, 90, l r o, l l 7, l 2 7, l 54, l 56, l 84, 206,

240, 2 4 1 , 268, 2 7 2 , 2 89, 3 0 3 , 3 2 0-2 2 , 3 2 3 , 3 2 7 Miller, Ann 1 50 Miller, Claude 1 48 Milne, Tom l 07 Minnelli, Vincente 2 2 3 Mitchum, Robert 3 8

NAM E I N D E X

Mitry, Jean 2 3 0 Mizoguchi, Kenji l S o M o Di 7 7-79 Moll, Giorgia 2 2 1 Monet, Claude 2 7 S Monod, Julien 3 l l Monroe, Harriet 2 54 Monroe, Marilyn l 9 1 MONTAIGNE, Michel d e S9-9 1 , 2 I 8-2 0 , 2 9 5 Montand, Yves 7 5-76, 2 0 5 Montesquieu 1 7 Montherlant, Henry de 2 49 Montsoret, Roger 1 7 Moore, G.E. 3 2 6 MORAVIA, Alberto 2 2 r -2 3 , 2 3 4 Morelli, Giovanni 2 S 2-S3 Morin, Edgar S4 Morrey, Douglas 2 S 3 Morton, Drew 1 5 3 Moullet, Luc 2 3 6 MOURLET, Michel 4 1 , 2 2 2 , 2 24-2 6 Mousset, Albert 1 2 2 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus So Mulot, Frarn;:ois 1 l 1 Munk, Andrzej 1 99 Murnau , F.W. 3 S , 4 3 , 6 3 , 64, 2 S9 Musil, Robert S6, S 7 MUSSET, Alfred d e 2 2 1 , 2 2 7-29 , 2 5 7 , 2 5 S Mussolini, Benito 49, 2 54 Newton, Huey P. 1 06 Nielsen, Asta 2 0 7 NIZHNY, Vladimir 23 0-3 2 Nougaro, Claude 1 3 4 Novalis 1 1 6 Offenstadt, Charles, Georges, Maurice & Nathan 1 49 Ophuls, Max 2 7 7 Otto, Natalino 2 70 OVID 2 33-3 5 Ozu, Yazujiro l S o Pabst, G.W. 74, 2 2 1 - 2 2 Pagnol, Marcel l 2 S Painleve, Jean 42 Palance, Jack 2 2 1 , 2 5 7 Parain, Brice 24S, 2 96 Parker, Charlie 3 0 Pascal, Blaise 7 0 , S9, 9 l

41 5

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard PAS OLINI, Pier Paolo 9 7 , 2 2 1 , 23 6-3 8 Paul, Jean 68 Paul, saint 64 Peckinpah, Sam l 2 PEGUY, Charles 1 5 8, 239-4 r PEISSON, E douard 242-44 Pellos, Rene 1 49 Piaf, E dith 1 0 2 Picasso, Pablo 9, 1 54, 2 5 2 , 2 74, 2 7 5 , 2 78 Piccoli, Michel 2 06, 2 2 l -2 2 , 3 l 3 Pierrot, Frederic 2 5 7 PINCHON, Joseph Porphyre see CAUMERY Pinchon, Pierre 1 49, 1 5 2 Pisano, Giovanni 1 98 Piscator, Erwin 74, 7 5 Plato 8 7 , 1 7 3 Plautus 2 3 3-34 POE, Edgar Allan 3 9, 242, 245-47, 24 8-5 0 , 2 p -53 Poitier, Sidney 2 9 Polanski , Roman l 2 Poncelet, Jean-Victor 3 8 Ponchielli, Amilcare 9 3 Pons, Isabel 2 84 Ponti, Carlo 2 2 1-2 2 Postif, Louis 1 8 5 Pouillet, Henri 7 POUND, Ezra 2 5 , 1 8 3 , 2 54-5 6 Preminger, Otto 1 66, 2 2 4 Prevert, Jacques 1 0 2 PROKOS C H, Frederic 2 2 l , 2 5 7-59 PROUST, Marcel 9, 5 8 , 1 3 9, 1 4 1 , 2 00, 2 6 0- 6 2 Pudovkin, Vsevolod 2 3 0 Putzulu, Bruno 6 1 , 242 Pynchon, Thomas 3 0 3 Quarrier, lain 1 04 QUENEAU, Raymond 6 3 , 8 3 -8 5 , 2 63- 6 5, 2 66- 68 QUENTIN, Patrick 2 69-7 r Quevedo, Francisco de 7 l Radiguet, Raymond 305 Radziwilowicz, J erzy 2 7 5 RAMUZ, Charles Ferdinand 1 8 7 , 2 7 2-74 Ravel, Maurice 2 5 2 Ray, Nicholas 2 89, 3 06 Rembrandt 6 2 , 64, 1 44, 1 9 7 Renaud, Madeleine 50-5 l Renoir, Auguste 2 7 8

NAME INDEX

Renoir, Jean 3 8 , 46, 1 1 3 , 1 89 , 2 8 1 , 2 8 8, 3 0 5 Resnais, Alain l 54 Reusser, Francis 2 74 REVERDY, Pierre 64, 7 2 -7 3 , 82, 2 4 1 , 2 7 5 -77 , 3 04, 3 2 7, 3 3 0 Ricciardi, Alessia 2 60 Ricoeur, Paul 4 7 Rilke, Rainer Maria 2 6 8 RIMBAUD, Arthur 6 2 , 2 1 5 , 2 46, 2 66, 2 7 8-2 80 Ringwald, Molly 2 99, 3 3 0 Rissient, Philippe 2 2 4 RIVETTE, Jacques 4 3 , 7 1 , 1 90, 2 8 r-83 , 307, 3 0 8 Riviere, ] acqueline 9 5 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 2 1 5 , 2 2 4 Robichaud, Paul 2 7 5 Robillot, Henri 1 64 Robinson, Edward G. 2 3 4 ROCHA, Glauber 2 04, 2 84-86 Roche, France 9 Rode, Thierry 1 67 , 3 2 6 Rodin, Auguste 70 Roemer, Michael 3 0 Roger, Jean-Henri 7 8 ROHMER, E ric 2 3 , 74-7 5 , 1 80, 2 66, 2 8 7-89 , 3 0 8 Rolling Stones 1 04, 1 06 Romero, George 209 Ropars-Weilleumi er, Marie-Claire 2 7 8 Rosenbaum, Jonathan 2 3 4 Ross, Kristen 9 6 ROSS ELLINI, Roberto 3 2 , 48-49, So, 1 4 2 , 1 7 8, 1 80, 1 9 3 , 1 98, 1 99, 2 2 1 , 2 2 3 , 2 3 5 , 2 8 8 , 29 0 -9 2 , 3 2 8 Rotman, Patrick 7 Rouch, Jean 84, 1 54 Roud, Richard 2 3 3 Rougement, Denis de 3 2 7 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 2 2 0 Roussel, Myriem 1 1 9-2 1 , 1 3 0, 1 6 7, 3 2 6 Rubenstein, David 1 7 Ruskin, John 1 96 Russell, ] ane 1 5 5 Saadi, Yacef 2 5 8 Sacha, Jean 1 0 2 SACOTTE, Marcel 293-9 5 Sadoul Georges 3 2 , 3 3 , 2 2 4 Saint-Exupery, Antoine de 242 Saint-Just 2 2 Sanbar, Elias 7 8

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard Sand, George 2 2 7 , 2 2 9 Sanders, Dirk 2 78 Sarbois, Helene de 2 5 7-58 SARTRE , Jean Paul 5-6, 60, 74, 1 1 6, 1 3 7 , 1 8 3 , 2 0 3 , 2 9 6-9 8, 3 1 5 Savignac, Jean-Paul 1 5 3 Sayigh, Yezid l I O Scherer, Maurice see E ric ROHMER Schiffman, Suzanne 7 1 Scholem, Gershom 1 6, 1 6 2 Scott, Jeremy 2 70 Scott, Walter 1 46 Seberg, Jean 1 3 7, 1 4 1 , 2 1 3 , 2 1 5- 1 6 Sellars, Peter 2 76, 2 99, 3 0 1 , 3 3 0 Severin, Gerard r r 9-2 r SHAKESPEARE, William 5 3 , 1 2 3 , 1 3 0, 1 3 7 , 2 76, 299-3 0 1 , 3 06, 3 3 1 SHANNON, Claude E. 3 0 2-4, 3 2 2 Sharrett, Christopher 5 6 Signoret, Simone 2 2 8 Silverman, Kaja 3 5-3 7 Siodmak, Robert l 5 5 Sissako, Abderrahmane 97 Sitney, P. Adams 5 2 Smith, Gavin 2 7 5 Snow, Michael 5 2 , 2 5 8 Snyder, Ruth 2 5 2 Socrates 2 9 2 Sollers, Philippe 2 0 3 , 2 2 9 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr l 8 3 Sontag, Susan 2 2 9, 249 Spiegel, Sam 2 3 6 Spielberg, Steven 3 4 Stael, Madame d e 9 Stael, Nicolas de 2 l Stalin, Joseph 77, 2 8 1 Stendhal 2 3 Sternberg, Josef von 7 2 , 249 Sterritt, David l 2 Stewart, James 64 Stevens, George 1 99, 3 2 8 Stewart, Alexandra 2 I O Strauss, Richard 2 5 2 Stravinsky, Igor 2 7 3 Stroheim, Erich von 1 8 1 Subor, Michel 6 , 8 , I 07, 1 60, 1 6 5 Suchenski, Richard 2 3 3 Suhrkamp, Peter 74-76 -

NA M E I N D E X

Sulik, Boleslaw 1 09 Szabo, Laszlo 6 Tamiroff, Akim l 3 5 Tanguy, Yves r o2 Tarantino, Quentin 7 Tashlin, Frank l 4 7 Taylor, Elizabeth 3 2 8 Tazieff, Haroun 42-43 Temple, Michael 143 Thal berg, Irving l 76 Thibon, Gustave 3 2 3 Thomas, Henri 2 l 5 Thompson. Jim r o 2 Tocqueville, Al exis de 1 7 , 1 69 Tourane, Jean 2 6 Trotsky, Leon 7 7 , l l 6 TRUF FAUT, Franc;ois 6, 2 5 , 2 6, 3 9 , 4 3 , 1 3 2 , 1 5 8, 1 5 9, 1 64-6 5 , 2 07, 2 2 2 , 2 8 1 , 2 8 3 , 2 8 7 , 2 89, 3 05 -7 , 3 0 8-1 0 Turner, JM.W. 3 9 Ulmer, Edgar 3 9 Updike, John 6 2 Vailland, Roger 2 6 9 VALERY, Paul 1 8 3 , 3 1 1-13 Van Dreelen, John ro2 Van Dyke, W.S . 49 Van Gogh, Vincent 1 97 VAN VOGT, A.E. 3 14-1 6 Vaneigem, Raoul r 1 4 Varda, Agnes 9 , 1 06, 1 40, 2 04 Velazquez, Diego 1 44-45, 1 5 0 Vertov, Dziga 7 5 , 1 1 0, 2 3 0-3 1 Verley, Bernard 1 6 1 Verwoert, Jan 2 6 2 Vian, Boris 9 9 , 3 r 5 Vidal, Gore 2 5 7 Vienet, Rene 1 1 4 Villeret, Jacques 5 3-5 5 , 1 2 3 VILLIERS, Gerard de p4-1 6 Villon, Franc;ois 3 3 Virgil 86-88 , 2 3 3 V1ady, Marina r 7, 2 3 , 84 Walsh, Raoul 2 2 4 WATSON, James D. 3 2 0-2 2 Weaver, William 3 0 2 Webb, Richard Wilson (Patrick Quentin) 2 6 9 WEIL, Simone 1 5 , 6 1 , 2 7 5 , 3 23-2 5

420

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

Weill, Kurt 74-76 Weissmuller, Johnny 94 Welles, Orson 2 6, 44-45 Wenders, Wim 94, 2 0 1 Wheeler, Hugh Callingham (Patrick Quentin) 269 White, Armond 3 2 2 White, Jerry 69 White, Lionel 2 7 8 Whitman, Walt 6 5 Wiazemsky, Anne 5 1 , 8 3 , 1 07 , 2 04, 2 0 5 , 2 08 Wilde, Oscar 65 Wilkins, Maurice 3 2 0 Williams, James S . 1 07 Wind, Edgar 2 8 2 Winkelmann, Johann Joachim l 96 Witt, Michael 2 0, 3 4, 40, 3 04 WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig 48, 1 2 1 , 1 8 3 , 3 1 5 , 3 2 6-2 8 WOOLF, Virginia 3 29-3] I Wright, Teresa 308 Yanne, J ean l l , 3 6 Yeshurun, Helit l l 2 Zagdanski, Stephane l 5 Zarader, Jean-Pierre 1 9 7 Zeno 6 5 , 3 1 2 Zola, E mile l 3 9

Table of Contributors

Julien d'Abrigeon (France) 2 7 8 Mateus Araujo (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil) l 1 6, 2 84 Jacques Aumont (Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle emeritus, France) 2 66 Timothy Barnard (Canada) 8, 4 1 , 44, 7 1 , 74, 89, 1 4 3 , 1 5 2 , 1 79, 1 8 8, 1 9 1 , 1 94, 1 9 7, 2 0 3 , 2 06, 2 2 1 , 2 3 0, 2 8 1 , 2 8 7, 3 0 5 Cyril Beghin (France) 1 2 8 Brett Bowles (Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S .A.) 3 2 Patrick M . Bray (University College London, U.K.) 2 6 Michel Cade (lnstitut Jean Vigo, France) l 3 4 Roberto Chiesi (Centro Studi-Archivio Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cineteca di Bologna, Italy) 86 Mark Cohen (Hunter College, CUNY, U.S .A.) 2 1 8 Ludovic Cortade (New York University, U.S .A.) 3 l 1 Michael Cramer (Sarah Lawrence College, U.S.A.) 2 3 6 , 2 90 Corin Depper (Kingston University, U.K.) 2 54 Antonina Derzhitskaya (Independent Scholar, Russia) 20 Richard Dienst (Rutgers University emeritus, Germany) 1 1 3 Daniel Fairfax (Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt, Germany) 77, 2 3 9, 2 96 Dmitry Golotyuck (Independent Scholar, Russia) 2 0 Makenna Green (U. S.A.) 1 1 Anthony R. Guneratne (Florida Atlantic University, U.S .A.) 2 3 3 Andre Habib (Universite d e Montreal, Canada) 47, 50, 5 3 Kevin ]. Hayes (University o f Central Oklahoma emeritus, U.S.A.) 1 7 , 2 3 , 56, 80, 1 07 , 1 40, 1 46, 1 5 5 , 1 64, 1 8 5 , 2 1 2 , 2 1 5 , 2 2 7, 2 4 2 , 24 5 , 248, 2 5 7, 2 69, 2 7 2 , 2 7 5 , 3 0 2 , 3 1 4, 3 2 0 Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt, Germany) 2 2 4 Junji Hori (Kansai University, Japan) 5, 1 2 5 Sam Ishii-Gonzales (New York University, U.S.A.) 5 9 t Roland-Franc;:ois Lack (University College London, U.K.) 9 2

42 2

Reading with Jean-Luc Godard

Colin MacCabe (University of Pittsburgh, U.S .A.) 1 3 7 Arthur Mas (France) 6 2 Ewa Mazierska (University of Central Lancashire, U.K.) 2 00 Robyn McGee (Metropolitan Community College-Longview, U.S .A.) I 04 Daniel Morgan (University of Chicago, U. S.A.) 3 2 6 Jill Murphy (Independent Scholar, U.K.) 1 4, 1 1 9, 3 2 3 Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne, Australia) 299 Glen Norton (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada) 2 9 3 Lindsey O'Connor (U.S .A.) 1 3 1 , 3 2 9 Karla Oeler (Stanford University, U. S .A.) 1 67, 1 70 Volker Pan ten burg (University of Zurich, Switzerland) 1 2 2 Jonathan Rosenbaum (U.S .A.) 3 08 Franz-Emmanuel Schurch (College Andre Laurendeau, Canada) 1 7 3 , 1 76 Shaul Setter (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel) 1 I O Anna Shechtman (Cornell University, U. S.A.) 2 60 Ethan Spigland (Pratt Institute, U.S.A.) 3 8 John Parris Springer (University o f Central Oklahoma emeritus, U. S .A.) 65 , 98, I O I , 2 09, 2 5 1 David Sterritt (Maryland Institute College of Art, U.S .A.) 2 9 Jonathan Strauss (Miami University, Ohio, U. S .A.) 3 5 Tamara Tasevska (Baruch College, CUNY, U. S .A.) 95 , 1 49 Steven Ungar (University of Iowa emeritus, U.S .A.) 8 3 Rick Warner (University o f North Carolina a t Chapel Hill, U. S .A.) 68, 1 8 2 , 3 1 7 Catherine Webster (University of Central Oklahoma, U. S .A.) 2 6 3 James S . Williams (Royal Holloway, University o f London, U.K.) 1 5 8 , 1 6 1

FREDRIC JAMESON teaches at Duke University. He is the author of more than a score of books on aesthetics, cultural theory and poli­ tics. His most recent volumes are on Walter Benjamin and Raymond Chandler. He has also written extensively on film, most recently on Robert Altman, Theo Angelopoulos, Alexei Gherman and Alexander Sokurov.

Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma, now lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. A special­ ist in the history of reading, he is the author of numerous books in the field, including George Washington: A Life in Books, for which he received the George Washington Prize. His previous work in cinema studies includes Sam Peckinpah: Interviews; Martin Scorsese 's Raging Bull; and Charlie Chaplin: Interviews. His work has been trans­ lated into Italian, Greek, Persian, Spanish and Turkish. KEVIN J. HAYES ,

is the proprietor of caboose, for whom he has translated The Andre Bazin Reader; Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television by Jean-Luc Godard; The Kinematic Turn: Film in the Digital Era and Its Ten Problems by Andre Gaudreault & Philippe Marion; Montage by Jacques Aumont; and the forthcoming two­ volume Andre Bazin, Rhetorician: Epigrams r942-r958. He is the au­ thor of the essay Decoupage, included in the caboose volume lVlontage, Decoupage, Mise en scene: Essays on Film Form, co-authored with Frank Kessler and Laurent Le Forestier; co-editor with Peter Rist of South American Cinema: A Critical Filmography r9 r 5-r994 ; and the author of essays on Leon Moussinac and the early film proj ectionist. TIM OTHY BARNARD