Dedicated to John Cassavetes and Glauber Rocha--thus moving beyond the Hollywood productions excoriated in the preceding episode, with these icons of US independent film and the attempt for a tricontinental Third Cinema (Rocha's debate with Godard, his cameo at the crossroads in Vent de L'Est sampled here). Scepticism about the possibility of cinema as medium was built into it from a start: its pioneers thought that it was a trick form, a parlour game, a fairground show. They were right and not right. The story of cinema alone, a history alone--cinema's connection and disconnection to world history--the role of newsreel. George Stevens filming the European camps in 1945--cinema as record; but is filming alone cinema? Reality and illusion. Cinema's aim to be more real than life. Godard looks up, off screen, at the screen, reads two books at once, at times types out a script we neither hear nor see with the exception of grunted words.
Review of Une histoire seule
