I really like Godard’s work.  I’m going to be honest with you…Sometimes I literally get lost in his films, and by that, I mean I don’t understand the plot at all.  He’s heavy on existentialism, and I’m lucky if I can get through 30 minutes of a philosophy class.  Basically, I take pleasure in the pretty faces, unique cinematography and creative typography sequences.  There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

Godard and New Wave Cinema have been great influences on my own work.  I’m infatuated with Godard’s style though.  I hope to continue studying his work too.

My own work entitled L’Hommage à Godard (Film Sequence 1). It appears to be a rip-off, but trust me it’s appropriated imagery for admiration.  I like to think of it as a new narrative.  My good friend, Kendra, posed for this shoot.  In fact, she posed for a lot of my stuff.  Thanks, Kendra!  haha



Credit to I Love Hot Dogs for these fabulous stills.

For more:
Jean-Luc Godard on IMDB
Godard on Wikipedia

Uma filmagem de quatro semanas e uma direção intuitiva deram o tom ao marco da Nouvelle Vague francesa. Com direção de Jean-Luc Godard e roteiro de François Truffaut, “Acossado” (1959) é o início de uma revolução no modo de fazer cinema.

A história é sobre Michel Poiccard, um jovem golpista que acaba assassinando um policial. Ele quer fugir para a Itália com a Patrícia Franchisi, sua namorada norte-americana.

O filme de Godard é justamente a transição entre o cinema clássico da década de 1950 e as inovações e experimentações da década de 1960. A película é a concretização das discussões sobre teoria cinematográfica publicadas na revista Cahiers du Cinéma, que deram origem ao movimento Nouvelle Vague.

Do antigo, há a atmosfera noir e outras referências explícitas aos métodos hollywoodianos como, por exemplo, o ícone Humphrey Bogart. Do novo, há a câmera na mão – posteriormente complementada com “uma ideia na cabeça”, por Glauber Rocha – e a narrativa fragmentária, onde somos apresentados a cortes secos como matéria-prima para reconstituição do todo.

O que Godard buscava era devolver ao diretor e ao roteirista a condução do filme que, à época, a indústria cinematográfica colocou nas mãos do produtor. É simples de averiguar: antigamente os cartazes traziam em seu cabeçalho a pessoa ou dupla responsável pela produção da obra; agora o espaço é voltado, em parte, ao diretor do filme e, em sua maioria, ao elenco.

Assistir Acossado hoje não traz nem de longe o impacto que deve ter sido vê-lo, no ano de seu lançamento, nos cinemas de Paris. A linguagem transgressora já nos é acessível mas ainda obscura, afastada do grande público e das redes de cinema.

As tomadas de Michel cambaleando em uma rua da cidade ou ainda a repetição de seu tique nervoso foram depois retratadas em muitos outros filmes como uma espécie de homenagem e reverência. Uma citação sutil àquele que, por restrições orçamentárias, realizou parte dos travellings da película sentado em uma cadeira de rodas.

Posteriormente Godard e Truffaut se desentenderam em um embate intelectual que possui ecos até hoje: Cinema de Autor X Cinema de Personagens. Sem dúvida quem perdeu foi o público, que ficou privado do grande trabalho da dupla.

Em uma das cenas do filme, Patrícia entrevista um importante escritor e lhe pergunta qual é sua maior ambição na vida. Com muita calma, ele diz: “Tornar-me imortal e depois morrer”.

E assim fez-se Godard.

Filme: Acossado (À Bout de Souffle)
Diretor: Jean-Luc Godard
Elenco: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet
Duração: 90 minutos

Urso de Prata no Festival de Berlim (1960)

Outros prêmios

Não pisque: Na sequência em que Michel e Patricia conversam na cama.

Veja também:

O Desprezo (1963)

A Chinesa (1967)

Nossa Música (2004)

*Este filme foi assistido a pedido de Paola na seção Sua programação.

“Peu importe, Godard, Fuller, moi ou un autre, aucun de nous ne peut arriver à la cheville de Douglas Sirk. J’ai vu six films de Douglas Sirk. Parmi eux, il y avait les beaux du monde” (R. W. Fassbinder, Les films libèrent la tête, L’Arche, 1984).

Je n’en ai vu que trois, mais mon constat est le même : les films de Douglas Sirk sont parmi les plus beaux jamais réalisés. “Chef-d’œuvre”, “bouleversant” : bien que galvaudés par les critiques, ces deux mots sont bel et bien les seuls à même d’exprimer l’émotion ressentie à la vision de ces films, qu’il s’agisse de Ecrit sur le vent, Tout ce que le ciel permet ou de Le Temps d’aimer et le temps de mourir (un titre qui à lui seul résume le propos de Sirk dans nombre de ses films).

Entre 1953 et 1959, Sirk à tourné sept mélos capitaux. Le dernier d’entre, eux (et le dernier du réalistateur), Imitation of Life (Le Mirage de la Vie), est souvent considéré comme étant le plus beau. Si la réussite d’un film se mesurait aux nombre de larmes versées et du chamboulement émotionel qu’il provoque lors de sa projection, il faudrait alors remettre la palme au Mirage de la Vie.

Du générique (des diamants qui tombent lentement jusqu’à remplir l’écran tandis que les noms des acteurs apparaissent en surimpression) au carton de fin, chaque image est un véritable enchantement. “J’ai l’impression que les images durent deux fois plus que celles des films habituels, un quarante-huitième de seconde au lieu d’un vint-quatrième de seconde” écrira Godard dans sa critique des Cahiers du Cinéma à la sortie du film. Imitation of Life met en scène des personnages qui butent perpétuellement sur la réalité de la vie et les mirages que celle-ci produit. Chacun essaie de prendre ses désirs et ses envies pour des bien propres. Mais la réalité sociale les rattrape à chaque fois.

Suronommé “le Prince du mélodrame”, Douglas Sirk mériterait en fait le titre de Dieu du mélodramme. Un genre cinématographique qu’il su réinventer et dépasser pour le sublimer. Car derrière les films à l’eau de rose auquel on pourrait s’attendre à la lecture des résumés de scénarios, se cache une virulence et une émotion brute emprunt de ce que certains ont pu appeler un “réalisme fantastique”.

On pourrait parler des couleurs, toujours magnifiques, du choix impécables des acteurs, des décors – dans lesquels les miroirs, les fenêtres et les escaliers tiennent une place prépondérante -, de la neige et des saisons qui passent, du rôle de premier rang que tiennent les femmes dans ses films… On aurait pas plus fait le tour d’une œuvre magistrale et unique.

Les films de Douglas Sirk sont parmis les plus beaux du monde.

Dix ans après la sortie de Imitation of Life, les Supremes enregistrèrent un hommage inattendu à ce film sous le titre I’m Leaving In Shame. Une belle chanson dans la plus pure tradition Mowton dont les paroles font directement référence à l’histoire des personnages de Annie et Sarah Jane.

Cleo From 5 To 7 (1962)

Dir. Agnes Varda

From the incomparable Agnes Varda’s arguably greatest achievement, Cleo From 5 To 7, a French New Wave groundbreaker that somehow seems to feel just as fresh today as it ever was.  This scene is Varda’s mini-love letter to silent cinema, with friends Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina hamming it up for her camera.  Enjoy.

[I gave this paper at the Film-Philosophy Conference in July 2009, this is the unedited final transcript (I did read out most of it, even though I tried to improvise - or at least tried to pretend to improvise!) - Plus, it includes almost entirely earlier section on hope from the blog - here, I've confessed it all!]

Godard’s La chinoise and the apprenticeship of hopefulness (without hope)

Godard’s La chinoise, made in 1967, concerns a small group of student-militants, Maoists, who, having a bourgeois flat at their disposal over the summer, read, discuss and perform Marxist theory in order to be able to put it into practice: an attempt that, at least in the confines of the plot of the film, fails. This is a most banal outline of the plot, the simplest that one can abstract from the plethora of images, colours, dialogues, texts, sounds, ideas and more that dominate and complicate the plot of the film. In a way the plot is both primary and secondary: the film has a clear narrative, it leads to a dénouement, and so the plot structures the film. But the plot is secondary to the atmosphere of the film, the spirit of the film, which is constituted by what Rancière calls the “represented matter” of the film: Marxism, or Maoism, as “a catalogue of images, a panoply of objects, a repertoire of phrases, a programme of action: courses, recitations, slogans, gymnastic exercises”. As Rancière says, “Godard is not filming “Marxists” […] he is making cinema with marxism [Il fait du cinéma avec le marxisme]”.

Like most of Godard’s films, La chinoise is a didactic film, its main aim is to teach both the characters, who are being “educated” in Marxism-leninism, and the audience, who is supposed to engage critically with the “represented matter” of the film (and not just enjoy its aesthetics). It is a film “in the course of being made” as the inter-titles keep reminding us. How do we understand this? First, it draws our attention to when the film was made: it was made in 1967, and placed itself very much in the situation at the time. It was a critical engagement with what was happening at the moment in France, which as everyone knows, culminated in the movement of May 68. It is thus a film in the course of writing itself, in its time.

The inter-title also points to the fact that despite having a “completed version”, the film is incomplete: it is in the course of completion. It needs an audience, an audience that is called to listen, see, read, feel with the characters, all the while distancing itself as a critic, so as to not get too taken by their enunciations, in order to keep in view the contradictions that lead to the dénouement. However, as the audience, we must also place ourselves within the discourse, if we are to grasp at all the essence of the argument. For the plot is an argument, a critique of the student movement, an exposition of the inherent problem of the dialectic of theory and practice, a questioning of the naïve call for authenticity in Mao’s On Practice (or in a different reading, it could be a critique of the dogmatic deviation (from Mao), i.e., taking words and phrases from Marxist theorists, torn out of context, and repeating them blindly, dogmatically); it is moreover, a criticism, constructive, of the rush in which the characters find themselves, their unchecked, onanistic, indeed, dogmatic optimism (for it is not merely an “optimism of the will” here, but a naïve and dangerous optimism of ‘knowing’ that one is on the right path, a ‘knowledge’ that brooks no questioning).

All the same, the attempt at an Althusserian “autocritique” is not absent; it is simply not accomplished well. Within the closed confines of the bourgeois flat where they find themselves, the outside enters only in flashing images, in memories that cut through occasionally to show that there is indeed a world outside. However, this flash of the outside world is evanescent, even uncritiqued until the end of the film (where we suddenly and uncomfortably enter it). The slogan on the wall enjoins us to confront vague ideas with clear images, but this confrontation is something the audience must try to accomplish, it is not something that the characters can do very well: the onanism of their ideas confined within phrases thrown at each other, all the while never leaving the stark primary colours of their flat, necessitates their remaining vague. Outside the flat, the “reality”, the “unclear images” that they must confront is more impure, more complex, than the pure colours, the apparent clear simplicity (but really, vagueness) of ideas that the confines of the flat allow.

Clarity is afforded near the end of the film in the dialogue in the train between Francis Jeanson and Véronique (Anne Wiazemsky), the first proper scene that takes place outside the flat. But this clarity is only for us, the audience. It illuminates to us what has gone before, and is thus a retrospective clarity. It puts into perspective all that we experienced and thought in the flat. It gives us a chance to dissolve the boundaries of the pure colours of the flat, confronting it with the impure reality of the situation. If up to this point we were overwhelmed by the plethora of ideas thrown at us in the flat, we get a chance to suddenly confront the impurity of the situation – a situation which would not allow for a simple unmediated application of ideas, which for all their analysis remain painfully insufficient when it comes to the actual situation. This is what Véronique refuses to see, and what drives the plot to its tragic dénouement. The plot is tragic in a very basic sense: the dénouement is a necessary outcome of the very explicit tragic development of the plot. We even have a prediction: the words of Francis Jeanson in the train: “The way you’re going you won’t last a week, as I see it. I think you’re heading to a dead end”. Which gets us to the other clarity afforded to us, this time an anticipatory one. But this anticipation is not limited to the plot of the film, to what actually passes in the film. The anticipation is the fictional logical unfolding of the characters future, of which we are afforded but a glimpse in the last part of the film. The anticipatory clarity illuminates the necessity of “apprenticeship” and of patience. For us, the audience, it is a question of “knowing that suffering produces patience, and patience produces enduring fidelity, and enduring fidelity produces hope, and hope does not disappoint” (Badiou quoting St. Paul).

The characters are thrown into the outside world, where they must confront the quotidian in all its impurity, and enter their apprenticeship of life, the adventure of learning through practice. Guillaume Mesiter, the actor (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud), starts on his “theatrical vocation and his years of apprenticeship and his voyages on the route of a true socialist theatre”. This, I would argue is an apprenticeship of hope.

The tragedy, if we follow Badiou’s categorization in Theory of the Subject, is not Sophoclean but Aeschylean. It is not what Badiou calls “a reversal of restoration”, a return to a “framework of regulations” that is in question here (though such a reading is equally valid, and there are enough signs in the film that point to a Sophoclean end). But in a stronger reading (one that I prefer!) it can be seen as gesturing towards a “reversal of exile”, a reversal that is an “advent”, a “division beyond the law”, “the direction of which is the contradictory advent of justice by the courage of the new”. It is not simply a return to order, though there is a partial return – which is the immediate failure that the characters suffer; there is also the opening up of a possibility of a recomposition of a new order, the advent of hope.

We said that the plot concluded in a failure. But what is it to fail? This is the question which prefaces Badiou’s little book on the communist hypothesis. The answer we get is that of a doubling, a division of the concept of defeat, where the immediate “negative” part of a defeat (death, imprisonment, loss of force; in the film, an apparent “return to order”) is opposed to the “positive” aspect of the defeat: the re-thinking of tactics/strategy, change of models of action, invention of new forms of organisation. As Badiou phrases it, “the misfortune of failure changes into the combative excellence of a knowledge”. This explanation is not far from what Mao gives us in his On Practice, where defeats equal experience, and it is only through repeated failures that one can gain a correct knowledge of the situation. The film’s last act enacts this double aspect of defeat.

Véronique’s problem, in sum, was the problem of gaining knowledge, which is also the pivotal question of the film, the maoist one of the “relation between knowing and doing”. The film begins with positing “the principal problem of socialist strategy”, which is that of “creating the objective and subjective conditions which would make mass revolutionary action possible”. In the course of discussions in the flat, a question is posed (and reiterated): “where do correct ideas come from?” – the maoist/marxist answer is given: “they come from practice, which is class struggle”. In the conversation with Francis Jeanson, this is the problem Véronique struggles with: “if I ever want to acquire knowledge, it is necessary that I pass first through practice […] If I want to know the theory and methods of revolution, then I am obliged to participate, practically, in a revolution”. With the “knowledge” that all knowledge must come from practice, she was impatient, too impatient in fact, to get this knowledge. In the lack of a revolution she could participate in, she was ready to “invent a revolution” – an effort that necessarily led to a tragic dénouement.

But – and here the motif of the meta-plot of the film comes into play – this tragic dénouement is not the end, it is but a beginning. It is indeed the end of a beginning, end of a failed temporal sequence, but more profoundly it is, as Véronique says in the last phrase of the film: “only the first timid step of a long march”: a step that ends a disastrous beginning, but more importantly looks forward with hopefulness.

This hopefulness is of necessity abstract. There is no concrete telos that this hope points to; it is not hope of a “reward”. It is, as Badiou says, “a simple imperative of continuation, a principle of tenacity, of obstinacy”, or in Paolo Freire’s words, it is a hope “rooted in men’s incompletion, from where they move out in constant search”.

Hope is not bound to a telos. Hope is often understood as something that aims at a concrete telos: A hopes for x; if A gets x, the hope is fulfilled; if not, it is thwarted. As if hope could be reduced to an economy of goods. How useful could such an understanding be? Would it not be better to understand hope only in an abstract sense? Hope, understood not as hope for a telos, but as hopefulness.

Abstract hope points not to a reward, but to a future, a future that is not-yet. In the present, this hope is only hopeful perseverance. This hope cannot be reduced to desire – though the two are intertwined. The definition must be circular. Hope is hopefulness. It is hopeful patience, but not a passive patience: hope is a struggle for continuation in hopefulness. Simple passivity can only allow for an absence of hope, a giving up. As Freire says, “as long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait”. Hope is the imperative: do not give up!

However, hope is not dogmatic optimism, where we are secure in our possibly misguided, and necessarily naïve, “knowledge” that we are on the right path, a “knowledge” that brooks no questioning. Such dogmatic optimism cannot allow for an opening up of a universe of hope – it will necessarily limit it within the contours of its limited (but exalted) knowledge. Hope, which is not naïve optimism, will allow subjectively for a creative unfolding of a world of possibilities.

Hope is the essence of the subject, it “pertains to endurance, perseverance, to patience; it is the subjectivity proper to the continuation of the subjective process” – the subject continues in hope, and the perseverance of the subject is guided by a hope which gestures towards a world of possibility. Hope is an apprenticeship.

It is helpful to compare this concept of hopefulness to the closely related Badiouian concept of courage. Courage, in Logics of Worlds is one of the four subjective modalities, or affects (others being terror, anxiety and justice) that indicate the incorporation of a human-being into a subjective truth process.

[I was playing with the idea of fitting a character of the film with each of these four affects. Véronique-Terror (“desire for a great point, a decisive discontinuity which will institute the new world in a single blow”); Henri- anxiety (“the retreat before the obscurities of discontinuities, the desire for a continuity”); Guillaume-courage (“the acceptance of plurality of points, of the fact that discontinuities are at once inexorable and multiform” – i.e, his search for a “true socialist theatre”); and justice-Francis Jeanson, playing himself (“to affirm the equivalence of what is continuous and negotiated, and of what is discontinuous and violent”)]

But we can go back even further and look at the concept of courage in Theory of the Subject, where courage is “the divisible process of [the subject’s] intrinsic existence” and can be compared to “fortitudo (fortitude of strength of mind)” distinguishing it from mere “audacia (audacity or boldness)”. The subject, moves from mere audacity to a patient insistence that accompanies its incorporation into a truth process, the holding on to the point that as been seized: “the subject as courage, turns the radical absence of any security into its force”. This courage is also hope, which is the principle of the apprenticeship that the characters enter into. This apprenticeship comes in the form of a subtraction from the tragic dénouement of a return to order, the reign of the law, and gestures towards the opening up of a process whose guiding norm is hopefulness.

Two dialogues, made in the course of the fictional interviews with the characters in the flat may give us some sense of what this gesture may be. Véronique declares: “It is because everything is not clear that I continue to study, study to understand, then to transform, but to understand first”. And Guillaume, the actor, the one who, at the end of the film, is explicitly placed under the sign of an apprenticeship, declares: “Are not the words I pronounce, so awkwardly and blindly, part of a great unknown play, continuing through me […] its direction/sense incomplete, searching in me and with me all the actors and all the decors in its great naked discourse.”

These “vague ideas” articulated in the confines of the flat, are now confronted with “clear images” that confusedly whelm the new apprentices of life, apprentices in hopefulness. We are not yet presented with any resolution to the dialectic – only with an anticipation, the anticipation of an opening.

We said in the very beginning that this was a didactic film. Framed as an attempt to answer a question (“how is mass revolutionary activity possible in the present”); its form (the plot) and its matter (marxism) all tried in various ways to answer this question. No satisfactory conclusion was reached (except that “this is just a first step”). Nothing happened. No revolution was on the horizon. Everything went back to order – arguably, there was no opening here of any possibility or of hope. But, in the last act, we are presented with the “apprenticeship” of the actor, searching for a true socialist theatre, in ruins that have “theatre year zero” painted on them. The didactic nature of the film itself became ambiguous, retrospectively: the film “in the course of being made”, became also a film “in search” of its conclusion.

The film ends with a reflection on theatre, and the commencement of an apprenticeship, in search, not only of a new politics, but also of a new aesthetics.

I just watched an AMAZING movie. It’s called A Woman Is a Woman by Jean-Luc Godard and it’s a 1962 French New Wave film. It stars Jean Claude Brialy, Anna Karina, and Jean Paul Belmondo. The movie is supposed to be a tribute to the American musical comedy genre. It’s about an exotic dancer named Angela (Karina) who battles between the two love interests in her life.

It was a complete break from anyway other movie I had seen. It was like a 60’s Wes Anderson film. More appropriately Wes Anderson is more like a modern Godard. This movie is a smart, quirky, colourful and unconventional film, and could be one my favourite movies that I have seen in a while. I found the character of Angela, while extremely stubborn and sometimes melodramatic, to be quite charming. She enjoys reasons for drama, which is fitting as she dreams of being in an American musical movie. Angela seems to be happy when she is by herself, and then puts on an “unhappy” act whenever the two men are around her. I think she likes to have the attention, having two men to choose from, asking, “why are women always suffering”, and always contradicting herself (she would tell Émile that she hated him, and then off to the side she would say she loved him).

An important line in this movie is one that is asked a few times, “is this a tragedy or a comedy?” It’s interesting that one of the characters in the movie is asking this, as I was thinking the same thing as well. While the movie is a comedy, you can’t help but wonder about the severity of actual circumstances in the film. Angela asks her lover consistently and frequently to have a baby, and he calls her an idiot for asking. Both sides of the relationship cheat on one another, however they still end up with each other. One of the most poignant scenes took place near the end when Alfred put on a song by Charles Aznavour, and there was no dialogue for the whole song. All you could see was the sadness in Angela surface, which before this, she only talked about and never showed.

(It also helps that Anna Karina is insanely beautiful and the styling is B-A-N-A-N-A-S).

Sinopse:

Odile encontra com Arthur e Franz em uma aula de inglês e os conta que há uma grande quantia em dinheiro na casa de campo onde vive com sua tia. Arthur e Franz tentam convencê-la de roubar sua própria casa, enquanto tentam seduzi-la… No início Arthur tem mais sucesso, mas as coisas não são tão simples assim.

Ficha Técnica:

Direção: Jean-Luc Godard
Ano: 1964
País: França
Gênero: Drama, Policial
Duração: 97 min.
Título Original: Bande à Part
Título em inglês: Band of Outsiders

Elenco:

Anna Karina
Sami Frey
Claude Brasseur
Danièle Girard
Louisa Colpeyn

Trailer:

“Descontraído, estiloso e apaixonante. Bande à Part, junto com Os Incompreendidos de Truffaut e Acossado de Godard, é um dos expoentes máximos da Nouvelle Vague, um estilo peculiar do cinema francês. Cheio de inovações geniais, é um dos filmes mais interessantes que já tive a oportunidade de assistir.”

Download do arquivo torrent.
Download da legenda.

Link Alternativo: Filme em RMVB (Legendas Embutidas) – 315.3MB
Download.

“It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” – Jean-Luc Godard.

That’s how I see it.

La chinoise (1967)

Le mépris (1963)

Pierrot le fou (1965)

Une femme est une femme (1961)

(All films by Jean-Luc Godard)

And, I also like flags in general.  Just got curious about the origin of the three colours.

Tricolore: The flag of France (officially adopted on February 15, 1794)

Blue : Truth and loyalty, perseverance and justice

The color of Saint Martin, a rich Gallo-Roman officer who ripped his blue cloak with his sword to give one half of it to a poor who was begging him in the snow. This is the symbol of care, of the duty that the rich had to help the poor.

White : Peace and honesty

The color of the Virgin Mary, to whom the Kingdom of France was consecrated by Louis XIII in the 17th century; it is also the color of Joan of Arc, under whose banner the English were finally driven out of the Kingdom (15th century). It became logically the color of Royalty. The King’s vessels carried plain white flags at sea.

Red : Bravery and strength

The color of Saint Denis, the saint patron of Paris. The original oriflamme (a sacred banner used by the kings of France in the Middle Ages) was the red oriflamme of Saint Denis.

The Tricolour was used during the French Revolution and because the Revolution turned France from a monarchy into a republic. It is recognized as a symbol of freedom and liberty around the world. The colours represent those of Paris since 1358 (blue and red), combined with that of the Bourbon Dynasty (white), though they are usually associated with liberty, equality, and fraternity - all ideals associated with the French Revolution.

The design of the French flag is so meaningful that other countries have incorporated the Tricolore into their designs, and the colors red, white, and blue are frequently used by countries — including the United States — that promote liberty, equality, and fraternity.

-N.

Lemmy Caution contra el mundo

De distopías va la cosa últimamente, o siempre. Me apetecía volver a retomar Alphaville, que para mí es una de las dos mejores películas de Godard, aunque de su primera etapa me encante prácticamente todo. Es una película bellísima por fuera y probablemente por dentro, con sus mensajes crípticos y su simbolismo deshumanizado en busca de los verdaderos sentimientos. Una ciudad futurista con claro aire parisino de la época es lo que hace a Godard dar rienda suelta a su desesperanzada visión del mundo y de la dirección que estaba tomando la sociedad, hasta llegar al control mental por parte de un ordenador, Alpha60, prohibiendo sentimientos bajo pena de muerte, creando seres programados antes que humanos y vetando palabras a cada momento. Y aún así, es Anna Karina en su papel de Natasha VonBraun quien lucha contra lo impuesto y no quiere dejar al espía Lemmy Caution; es la esperanza para todos, la inocente y hermosa hija de quien está al mando y necesita ser rescatado. En sí Alphaville es una película bastante curiosa, no sólo por la mezcla de géneros, sino por llevarlos a cabo con los parámetros de la Nouvelle Vague, que hacen de algunas escenas un festín demasiado bizarro (pero con encanto). Con una puesta en escena sencillamente magnífica, es una interesante visión al género de la ciencia-ficción al estilo Godard. Puede resultar compleja, de hecho, lo es o tiene la intención de serlo, como todo en manos de Godard, pero hay una increíble sensación de inmensidad. No entraré en el momento por el que pasaba el matrimonio Godard-Karina, pero parece un ‘regalo’ final muy bello para una mujer tan maravillosa. Y voy a obviar por completo la existencia de un remake.

France 103m, B&W
Director: Jean-Luc Godard; Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert, Michel Debord

Godard employs a mix of dramatic fiction and comedy in a pseudo-documentary style of film-making which explores the popular culture of French youth in the 1960s. Within this loose framework, male and female perspectives are explicitly sought through pointed discussions and quasi-interviews made directly to the camera. The story primarily follows the relationship of Paul, an idealistic young man with a passion for classical music who just completed his required military service, and Madeleine, an emerging French pop-vocalist whom he pursues as his primary love interest. The result is an intriguing series of events and discussions about politics, sex, music and culture which are interspersed with random and sometimes shocking events that mimic the sense of detachment from each other and traditional society in general (Klaus Ming November 2009).

Espacio Fundación Telefónica

Genealogías de cine

Lunes 23, martes 24 y miércoles 25 de noviembre de 2009 – 18hs

A cargo de David Oubiña, Eduardo Russo y Jorge La Ferla
Coordinación: Gerardo Yoel

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Los dispositivos que idearon los cronofotógrafos para poder descomponer el movimiento no son ajenos a ese universo de artefactos entre lúdicos y científicos que poblaron el siglo XIX con nombres tan estrafalarios como zootropo, praxinoscopio, etc., que fueron agrupados con el nombre genérico de ¨juguetes filosóficos¨. Este término de juguete filosófico encierra la expresión de una actividad en la que todavía se mantenían unidas la dimensión del juego y la del pensamiento. El cine se convertirá rápidamente en lo opuesto de la filosofía: uno será pura acción concreta allí donde la otra reclama reflexión abstracta. Al igual que el planteo del libro nos proponemos establecer en estas dos clases las relaciones que existen entre esta estética generada en los antecedentes del cine y referentes de la pintura como Marcel Duchamp, del video arte como Bill Viola y del cine como Jean Luc Godard.

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i just finished watching a movie called breathless and honestly i really liked it and it made me think about richard gere in a totally different and more positive way. his performance in this film is just awesome.

valérie kaprisky and richard gere in breathless

doing a little research on the flick, i learned it’s a remake of à bout de souffle by jean-luc godard starring jean-paul belmondo and jean seberg.
i actually can’t wait to see it.

It’s not clear whether someone asked him or not, but Richard Curtis seems to think that he is now responsible for presenting a vision of Britain that glows with progressive energy and infectious optimism. Not for him the kitchen-sink realism of Ken Loach or Andrea Arnold, or the hard-knock macho silliness of Nick Lowe. He’s more interested in treating the stuffy image of Britain as a curtain that can be pulled back to show a country that will be compelled to dance if someone plays the right song. Thanks are due for making British history as funny as he (and co-writer Ben Elton) did with Blackadder, but his dominance over British film and TV becomes hard to swallow as we are submerged under a tide of worthy feel-good pablum such as The Vicar of Dibley, The Girl in the Cafe, the TV adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s cutesy The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, etc. As with overworked screenwriter Andrew Davies, Curtis gets everywhere, and for those of us who would like British culture to contain more than slightly raunchy adaptations of classic novels or movies that make committee-driven American product feel like the works of Jean-Luc Godard, the ubiquity of these two men begins to feel a little oppressive.

The Boat That Rocked is Curtis’ most recent attempt at mythologising the British Experience, taking the fascinating story of Radio Caroline and reducing it to a bog-standard rebels vs. Empire tale riddled with dick jokes, unappealing caricatures, and a depressingly retrograde attitude to women. Actually, “jokes” is the wrong word to describe the zaniness that pervades the movie. There is never anything as concrete as a joke delivered. Instead there is a nebulous air of “humour”, an ambience that feels funny without ever doing anything amusing. It is to comedy as froth is to food. Unfortunately that froth is thinly spread over two hours of footage.

Giving a synopsis of the movie is simultaneously difficult and very easy. Difficult because a lot of small things happen that mean nothing in terms of plot, but easy as the central thread of the movie — youth vs. old age — is presented with Manichean simplicity. As with Radio Caroline, the movie’s fictional counterpart — the imaginatively named Radio Rock — broadcasts pop music from a boat moored somewhere in the North Sea to a large audience of young listeners. Unlike Radio Caroline, Curtis creates a scenario where the British government — and by association the BBC — have restricted the amount of popular music played on licensed national radio, and Radio Rock serves as a corrective to this by pumping out a non-stop barrage of The Who, The Small Faces, The Kinks, and the odd Motown/Stax classic for variety. Of course, the BBC played more popular music — and Radio Caroline less subversive music – than Curtis will admit. He operates in broad strokes, and fact will merely reduce the impact of his blunt message.

While the boat is populated with a menagerie of ill-defined “characters” (in both senses of the word) having the time of their lives, the establishment is painted as a group of out-of-touch, sour-faced nags, as grey as Steve Bell’s caricatures of John Major. It is painful to see Kenneth Branagh trying — and failing — to breathe life into the character of Sir Alastair Dormandy. Given no inner life to work with, Dormandy states quite clearly that he is trying to destroy pirate radio as he thinks it’s horrible and hates the thought of the public enjoying themselves. His unsubtle grouching is mostly aimed his equally hateful second-in-command, played by Jack Davenport. Much has been made of the name of this character — Twatt — though less note has been made of the decision to change the name of personal assistant Miss C from the original name of Miss Clit. Curtis must be more interested in displaying Twatt than acknowledging the existence of Clit, I guess.

That might explain why The Boat That Rocked is set in a retrograde world where women are sexually liberated enough that they don’t seem to mind being swapped around from one Radio Rock DJ to another as if they were soulless commodities. One excruciating scene shows DJ Dave (Nick Frost) attempting to deceive groupie Desiree (Gemma Arterton) into sleeping with virginal wallflower Carl (Tom Sturridge, looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights), the inference being that Desiree will be just fine with this because it’s all fair game and not actually non-consensual sex. Even Radio Rock proprietor Quentin (Bill Nighy) endorses this deflowering project, bringing his niece Marianne (Talulah Riley) onboard as a figurative virginal sacrifice to Carl, who is then seduced by Dave behind his back despite his earlier efforts to help the young man.

It’s the last thing you would expect from Curtis, and one suspects he is trying to pay homage to Carry On-style British sauciness, but his attempts to make this seem charming and empowering fail because the only contrast to this selfish behaviour is the colourless world populated by fun-hating automatons like Branagh and Davenport. It’s either grey cardigans or thoughtless sexual voraciousness, and you don’t want to be on the side of the squares, do you? It doesn’t matter if you treat your fellow man / woman with contempt, as long as you’re having a good time doing it. Besides, Curtis is otherwise politically correct enough to add an almost mute black kid (Ike Hamilton) and a lesbian (Katherine Parkinson) to the crew, because yay diversity! Calling the tone of the movie schizophrenic is putting it mildly.

It doesn’t help that Curtis’ cast of characters are unforgivably awful, and his impressive cast wasted. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans play egotistical buffoons who care more about upstaging each other than about the feelings of their colleagues, shunning feeble Omega-males Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby and Tom Brooke (playing Baldrick-surrogate Thick Kevin) as if tainted. Even Nick Frost’s innate likeability is not enough to make his character endearing, which says much for Curtis’ misunderstanding of tone. If only someone had taken Curtis to one side to explain a truth established a long time ago: there is nothing more tawdry and depressing than hearing an Englishman talk about sex. Memories of Robin Askwith peering through bedroom windows at horrified housewives in their underwear flash through the mind. If Curtis is trying to evoke memories of British sex comedies from the Sixties and Seventies, the pertinent question is: why in the world would anyone in their right mind want to do that?

If we’re meant to be attracted to this group of misogynistic grotesques, the reasons are lost in the edit, which could account for the majority of the movie’s flaws. Tales are told of an original three-hour edit, pared down to 135 minutes in the UK and 90 minutes in the US (where the title has been changed to Pirate Radio). The UK release seems so unfocused that it feels like Curtis lost track of all of the footage in the editing room and accidentally deleted the wrong scenes, leaving us with lots of pointless dancing and a disparate collection of second acts that have no context. As such it is hard to criticise the movie for its sexual politics or unappealing characters because we cannot know if these failings would have been resolved had the editing been tighter. Much as I don’t want to attribute gross negligence to a man who has been telling stories with some success (financial and artistic) for a long time, it’s apparent that The Boat That Rocked is not a finished product. Was Curtis bored with this project by the time of release? Did the shooting schedule run over due to all of the larks, leaving less time for post-production?

This stew of unresolved threads cannot be called a movie. It’s a themed sketch show, intentionally leaving the odd memorable moment adrift in a content-free tone soup of tone. Daisyhellcakes (whose affection for Curtis’ work was severely dented by this movie) observed that its poor-plotting and forced air of jollity were reminiscent of Mamma Mia, and she’s onto something, and not just because criticism of the subject matter comes with the risk of being labelled a humourless prude. Other than a subplot about Carl finding his father (played by Ralph Brown as a stoner, for a change), Curtis cannot bring any subplot to a satisfying conclusion and so resorts to Mamma Mia director Phyllida Lloyd’s trick of battering the audience with relentless upbeat exhibitionism. There are a seemingly infinite number of montages showing people dancing around their radios, cross-cut with shots of DJs yelling tedious insults about penis size at each other over the assorted Sounds of the  Sixties. If you thought Good Morning, Vietnam would have been a better movie without Robin Williams or the clumsy rhetoric about the horrors of war, you were wrong.

Perhaps Curtis has watched too many clip shows on Channel 4, and thinks that as long as he adds a couple of  scenes that resonate enough to get a mention in one of those time-wasting monstrosities then his job is done. The only moment that generates an emotional response is when Chris O’Dowd’s virginal DJ Simple Simon Swofford is jilted by his new bride (January Jones, not setting the world of comedy on fire with her two scenes). As she leaves him after seventeen hours of marriage to be with Rhys Ifans’ lothario Gavin, a heartbroken O’Dowd plays Lorraine Ellison’s gut-wrenchingly beautiful Stay With Me and mimes along, face contorted in pain.

Sadly, any hope that this scene will add an extra dimension by reflecting on the emotional fallout that can come with free love and — more importantly — what these characters actually think other than “Fab grooviness!”  is futile. O’Dowd seemingly forgives Ifans a few minutes later, and by the end of the movie he has found a new love interest whose boobs drive him into paroxysms of screeching joy. The calculation of Curtis is even more apparent when — during a credit sequence that features much of the leftover footage of the cast members dancing badly — Ellison’s breathtaking version of Stay With Me is replaced by a soulless cover version by Welsh squeak-merchant Duffy. Cross-media synergy pours from the screen, with Duffy’s impression of a jilted mouse providing the soundtrack.

Making this nostalgic movie in the Internet age — where we have a hither-to unheard-of opportunity to express ourselves or find like-minded individuals — there is potential here for an exploration of what it was like to live in an era when broadcasting thoughts and music from the fringe was a privilege of a select few willing to oppose the restrictive establishment. The Boat That Rocked is not interested in that, and shouldn’t be criticised for telling a different story. Nevertheless, what we get instead of an exploration of… well, anything, is a melange of disconnected anecdotes and an ill-defined shout of rage at officious nay-sayers who think they have the right to monitor and protect our morals. It’s impossible to tell if Curtis has anything substantial to say within the chaos of this edit, though it must be noted that his rush to paint the British government as the enemies of anything progressive means he has to attribute the formation of the pirate-radio-killing Marine Offences Act to a joyless villain with no soul. In real life the act was put into law by the Postmaster General, who at the time was Tony Benn, one of the most fearless and progressive politicians the UK has ever seen. Even though Curtis has made it clear that his movie is a fantasy, it’s still inspired by reality, and this misrepresentation of what Benn stands for leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

The Boat That Rocked is worth avoiding for many reasons: the relentless wave of forced glee, the depressing stream of witless dick jokes, the contrived Field-Of-Dreams-esque uplift of the final scene. However, beneath the whirl of colour and cheekiness  of his fantasy world is a mass of contrivance that betrays the far more interesting and complex tale of the battle between Radio Caroline and Tony Benn. Any serious message that could be derived from the very real conflict between the government and the motormouth DJs of 60s pirate radio has been drowned out by the endless Funn! ™, leaving us with a Cool Brittania promo vid that would have seemed hoary last decade. It’s a vapid exercise in nostalgia porn that wallows in the murkiest waters of seaside-postcard-esque British culture and reveals Curtis’ carefully sculpted reputation as a writer of sophisticated comedy is an empty PR fantasy. Other than the similarly regressive Lesbian Vampire Killers — a contender for worst movie of the decade — The Boat That Rocked is the most dispiriting British film released in 2009. Do yourself a favour and find a copy of Allan Moyle’s Pump Up The Volume instead. It features 100% less Rhys Ifans and has Leonard Cohen and Sonic Youth on the soundtrack. It’s good enough to make me moodily dance around my radio.

My style might not always be too adventurous but I like things that are classic and timeless. Classic styles are forever to me.  With the music, architecture, even movie posters and typography, every element in the old movies influenced me a lot when I was younger.  Here, Anna Karina’s character, Odile is wearing a simple crew neck sweater and tartan check pleated skirt. This outfit is so simple but I think it’s perfect. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t look old or modern. It’s simply just good clothes.

Bande à part (1964)

Above: Odile meets two guys, Franz and Arther in an English language class and they become friends.  Odile and Arthur decide to dance and Franz joins them as they perform a dance routine. Fabulous scene from the movie.

When I wear a sweater, I often do it like a college student. That’s just my thing. No fancy accessories needed. Maybe just with good shoes and not sneakers.

My colour choice for old fashioned cable knit sweaters is THIS.

(Dorothy McGuire)

Keep it simple. Good personality is all you need.

(Photos via LIFE)

-N.

]]> http://cinemacuts.com/2009/11/16/vivre-sa-vie-film-en-douze-tableaux-1962-2/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:22:34 +0000 cinemacuts http://cinemacuts.com/2009/11/16/vivre-sa-vie-film-en-douze-tableaux-1962-2/ done

Anna Karina, en esta escena de “Vivir su vida”, bailando ante desconcertados e interesados asiduos a este “Billar Café”. Como de costumbre, una interpretación deslumbrante.

Having seen Masculin féminin just days before A Married Woman, I expected to inevitably draw some parallels between the two regardless of how similar they were, but now that I’ve seen both, the similarities are really quite striking. They are very similar films, and I’m not sure this was unintentional. A Married Woman is told through the eyes of an unhappy, elusive and spontaneous woman. She’s exactly the kind of woman men fear. She’s impossible to possess, which brings me to the first comparison to Masculin féminin. Paul’s failure to possess Madeleine, the ever-modern woman resigned to her fate as a pop-culture construct, was the focal point of that film, whereas A Married Woman has its gaze set on the ever-modern woman, this one married. Her sex appeal is the central focus of the camera, though she’s allowed to keep her “secrets” i.e. she’s never shown nude, merely every other inch of her body except what every male is dying to catch a glimpse of. This of course is reflective of her indecisiveness and spontaneity. This brings into mind the nature of the youth depicted in Masculin féminin. Their interests aren’t deep ones, they show but a passing interest in things outside of their own social circles. Paul’s interest in politics doesn’t see him working to improve the situation, he simply tags his opinion on who and what he can.

Paul is “the child of Marx”. Madeleine is “the child of Coca-Cola”, obsessed with fashion, music and trends. This is where Madeleine meets Charlotte from A Married Woman. As seemingly less than flattering Godard painted the women of Masculin féminin, moreso Madeleine, he paints Charlotte with a less scathing brush. We get a bit of insight into what Godard sees as helping paint these women into their social corners: the endless pursuit of the perfect physique. The perfect female. One proportioned to mass standard. A sexual woman not concerned with the ills of the world, only concerned with pleasing her man. But as we all know, this trap that we’ve set can’t last, thus the infidelity and the racing minds of Godard’s females. Godard rarely paints his males in a much better light. They’re often too caught up in work to pay any attention to their families, treat their women poorly and/or are too numb or indifferent to truly sympathize with the chaotic mind of the female.

Masculin féminin’s depiction of youth is one of critical sympathy. Godard felt a distance growing between him and the younger generation of the time, and Masculin féminin was a sort of attempt to put himself back in that place. All of the awkward conversations, fleeting loves and passing desires are captured wonderfully and reflected perfectly through the fragmented structure, the extended contemplative silences and the bursts of emotion. A Married Woman’s heavy focus on words-within-words rather aptly relays Godard’s desire to have you read between the lines. There is no black and white, despite the choice of film stock. Charlotte is a complex, beautiful woman, and though she seeks a freedom that is likely far too abstract to ever reach, she’s never too far from an influence keeping her trapped in a cage. Godard’s keen filming of these influences, obsessions and subliminal text-within-text suggests a deep desire to understand her, and by extension, women in general.

Virvre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) by Jean-Luc Godard 1962.

It’s everything in the French New Wave that makes me love classic european styles so much (like this), not only just fashion but also interior design, cars and good espresso. This image of Anna Karina (as Nana) in Virve Sa Vie wearing the simple round-neck cardigan was always in my mind when I was searching for one. (and I found one.)

-N.

]]> http://priscilaarmani.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/erika-machado-godard-humberto-mauro-curso-do-pablo-villaca-e-encontro-de-twitteiros/ Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:05:19 +0000 Priscila Armani http://priscilaarmani.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/erika-machado-godard-humberto-mauro-curso-do-pablo-villaca-e-encontro-de-twitteiros/

Muito movimentada foi e está sendo ainda essa semana. Um zilhão de coisas para fazer e ainda estou furando um pouquinho do meu tempo para escrever aqui. Mas não resisto. Me divirto um bocado com o blog.

Na quarta-feira (dia 11/11) foi lançamento do CD da Érika Machado no Teatro Alterosa, cantora que eu simplesmente amo! Entrevistei ela pro Mondo BHZ e ela foi super simples e simpática. Adoro gente assim, humilde. E o som dela é fan-tás-ti-co. Quem não conhece, precisa conhecer. Escutem um pouquinho do trabalho dela no site. Vocês vão se apaixonar! Ela e o som dela são muito cativantes.

Ainda na quarta, me matriculei no curso do Pablo Villaça. Lembra que eu falei desse curso há quase um ano? Ele está acontecendo em BH de novo. E dessa vez eu não dei bobeira! Já me matriculei. Vai acontecer de 30 de novembro a 04 de dezembro, à noite. Só recebi referências boas. E sei que vou curtir adoidado.

E falando em cinema, esse fim-de-semana vai ser movimentado para os amantes da sétima arte. Na Casa do Baile, começa no sábado (14/11) a programação do Filme no Baile, que nesse mês contempla ninguém menos que Jean-Luc Godard, grande cineasta francês que é praticamente uma unanimidade quando se trata de cinema. E no Cine Humberto Mauro teremos a mostra A Perseguição no Cinema, que traz quatro filmes clássicos e um seminário com a filósofa francesa Marie-Jesus Mondzain. Dentre os filmes exibidos estão O Mensageiro do Diabo, de Charles Laughton; e Os Pássaros, do grande Hitchcock.  Tudo gratuitamente. Dessa vez não tem desculpa pra não sair de casa e pegar um cineminha!

E, para completar, no Domingo tem o primeiro Encontro de Twitteiros Culturais em Belo Horizonte. Irei, junto com meu marido, representando os sites. O objetivo desse encontro é promover um debate saudável entre os twitteiros de BH que usam o twitter como uma ferramenta de divulgação cultural. O Encontro vai acontecer às 16hs no Status Café. Nesse link no início do parágrafo tem mais detalhes, caso você tenha se interessado.

Ainda não me segue no Twitter? Tá dando bobeira… Meu endereço é twitter.com/priskka e os endereços dos sites são twitter.com/opperaa e twitter.com/mondobhz. Segue a gente pra saber do melhor em programas culturais em BH!

Beijos!   

Mei Yau and I were recently discussing the unusual relationship that France has with American popular culture. We came to the conclusion that despite (or maybe partly because of) France’s general resistance to the sort of full-scale Americanisation that we have experienced in the UK, for years the French have appeared to be fascinated by a mythical, archetypal vision of America that bears little relation to historical or current reality. That is to say that whilst American culture and ideas have permeated almost every insignificant aspect of British life – due in part, no doubt, to our shared linguistic and cultural heritage – this has perhaps not happened to quite the same extent in France. Therefore, French film-makers, musicians and other artists have been able to explore and cultivate an idea of America that might seem ludicrous and contrived in a country such as the UK, where every other television programme or song on the radio is from the USA.

Examples of this can be seen in many different strands of French culture: the slightly bizarre popularity of Western-themed French language cartoons such as Lucky Luke and Willie Boy; the French film industry’s hero worship of such Hollywood outsider figures as Samuel Fuller and Mickey Rourke; Serge Gainsbourg’s scabrous yet also somewhat enchanted take on American trash culture in many of his most famous songs; the sincere fascination displayed by young French musicians like M83 and the Valerie Collective towards American teen films such as those of John Hughes, along with other more ephemeral aspects of 1980s US youth/pop culture that are often held up for derision and ridicule here in the UK.

This topic could clearly be discussed at much greater length, and maybe I will do so at some point. For now though, I’ll just leave you with a nice homemade video (not by us!) for a classic song that – along with the above links – hopefully illustrates to some extent what I’ve been saying.