The Frame » Jean-Luc Godard

Masculin Feminin

Jandy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:56:14 +0000

A stylistic return to earlier films like Band of Outsiders, but thematically tending toward Godard’s eventual political turn in 1968. Paul (Léaud) is a student and frequent protestor against the Vietnam War; meanwhile, he cautiously (almost indifferently, though his indifference is probably a pose) romances Chantal Goya. I enjoyed the film, as I always enjoy Godard films, but I need a rewatch to talk about it competently. Again, like all Godard films. I know a few people who like Masculin Feminin best of Godard’s films, and Chantal Goya best of his heroines, but she’s still not Anna Karina. :) And the ending threw me off. Still, so did Pierrot le fou’s the first time, and now it’s one of my favorite Godard films.
Above Average

Made in USA

Jandy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:52:13 +0000

In which Jean-Luc Godard tries to meld Pierrot le fou’s visual and narrative style with an overtly political story. Anna Karina is looking for her boyfriend, Richard P—, who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, perhaps the victim of a political intrigue. Along the way, she’s thrust into a world like “a Disney film starring Humphrey Bogart. A film with a political message.” She meets various other people who may or may not be helping her on her quest, who tend to break down into interesting but unrelated language games at random times. The overall effect is extremely pretty to look at, but essentially incomprehensible, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Godard certainly pushes the limit of how little plot information he can give and still keep us watching.
Above Average

Weekend

Jandy — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:57:44 +0000

The bad thing: Anna Karina isn’t in it, which makes me sad. The good thing: it’s good anyway. A spoiled bourgeois couple try to take a weekend vacation (with the ulterior motive of obtaining the woman’s inheritance, even if that requires killing her father, apparently), but keep running into obstacles. The most memorable of which is the longest traffic jam in the world, which we pan across forEVER, moving past car after car; some people have gotten out and are having picnics, others are honking madly, and still others, like our couple, pull into the other lane to try to get around it. The jam is caused by a car accident, the first of many crashed cars the couple comes across during the film, which I think symbolize the ultimate outcome of bourgeois life, as Godard sees it–a constant race to get the next big thing ending in tragedy that nobody cares about. The end lost me a little, but up until then, it was enjoyable watching Godard synthesize objects, ideas, and styles from his earlier films. And virtuoso tracking shots make me happy.
Well Above Average

Alphaville

Jandy — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:13:21 +0000

Or, Jean-Luc Godard does sci-fi. Sort of. Lemmy Caution arrives in Alphaville, which has been taken over by a gigantic computer, which runs and regulates everything in the town. All the details were a little hard for me to grasp, even though I watched it twice (I never did get what exactly brought Lemmy to the city in the first place), but there are, as usual for Godard, a lot of interesting things going on. My beloved Anna Karina is here, as the girl who becomes both Lemmy’s way to get into the computer to destroy it and his love interest. There’s a good bit of 1984 in it, especially linguistically–what the inhabitants of the city term “the Bible” turns out to be a dictionary, which is replaced daily with a new one, as the list of approved words changes. There’s a great scene where Natacha (Karina) and Lemmy discuss words which have been deleted from the city’s vocabulary, suggesting that if the word for something doesn’t exist, than neither does the thing itself–Natacha can no longer feel emotion because the necessary language no longer exists. And the weapon Lemmy brings against the totalitarian computer? Poetry. Awesome. Anyway. The lighting scheme and set design are great too, very minimalist, and very obviously 1960s-era Paris. The plot may be futuristic, but the setting isn’t…a purposeful move on Godard’s part, who in 1965, when this was made, was moving into a more politically-charged section of his career.
Well Above Average

Le petit soldat

Jandy — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:35:24 +0000

I’m sorry, Jean-Luc, I didn’t quite get it this time. This Godard film was made in 1961, but not released in France for a couple of years because of its unflinching torture scenes and intimation that the French army was quite as unprincipled as the Algerian one during the Algerian War. I don’t know anything about the Algerian War (I tried to gather some info from Wikipedia about halfway through, but it wasn’t quite enough), and while I liked a lot of the moments in the film (especially those involving Anna Karina, because I have a girlcrush on her), the whole thing just kept losing me. I think the main character is a rather ambivalent French spy who gets captured by the Algerians and tortured, and then gets taken in by the French and tortured again, because they think he’s turned or something (and Karina is a spy too, but I forget for which side). Yeah, I just got really confused. And this is after a good three times trying to watch it this month. I’ll try it again later sometime, I promise, Jean-Luc.
Average

Vivre sa vie

Jandy — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:27:24 +0000

Jean-Luc! You’re not supposed to depress me. Of course, take a story about a young woman whose financial difficulties push her into becoming a prostitute, and I guess it’s just sort of naturally depressing. I didn’t think I liked the film much after watching it, what with the depressingness, but now it’s a couple of months later, and I can’t get it out of my head. There’s so much going on: the way he’s using the camera, the use of negative space (both in the visuals and the soundtrack), the mirror symbolism, the influence of silent cinema…it’s absolutely incredible.
Superior

A Woman is a Woman

Jandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:24:19 +0000

Angela (Anna Karina) wants to have a baby. Her boyfriend Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) isn’t terribly excited by the idea and jokingly foists her off onto their friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) – who is himself deeply in love with Angela. Though there’s real conflict in the relationships, the overarching tone is farcical, and I dare you to watch the film without a smile on your face. And, being a Jean-Luc Godard film, it’s got more of interest than just the story–his experimentation here is largely confined to the soundtrack, which goes from unexpectedly loud and foregrounded to bracingly absent, almost making the film a musical. Because of Godard’s technical playfulness, the film is of interest from a film studies point of view, but it’s also just plain fun. Don’t make it your only Godard film, but it’d be a great place to start. See some clips and commentary in my post here.
Superior

Band of Outsiders

Jandy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:23:10 +0000

Oh, Jean-Luc Godard. You and I have had a rather uneasy cinematic relationship, I know. I’ve considered your colleague François Truffaut to be the essential New Wave director and his masterpiece The 400 Blows to be greater than yours, Breathless. So why, after seeing Breathless multiple times, as well as your other most famous film Contempt, is it this admittedly important but slightly lesser film Band of Outsiders that made me fall voraciously in love with your films? Why should this slight story of three young people and their rather apathetic and doomed robbery attempt have captivated me so much? Is it the joyful spontaneity with which the characters suddenly break into an imitation of an American crime film? Is it your noncommital camera that seems both objective and tragically sympathetic at the same time? Is it the almost wholly foreign (to Americans) tendency to showcase scenes–like the scene where the characters dance in a cafe for several minutes, or the one where they experiment with a minute of complete silence–that seem to do nothing to advance the plot, but rather embrace the lives of the characters? Is it your bittersweet, detached yet complicit voiceover narration? Maybe. I only know that after watching it, I immediately added all of your movies to my Netflix queue.
Superior