One of the grand paradoxes of Jean-Luc Godard is that he was a radical, an outlier, a filmmaker who guarded his purity and always looked askance at “the system,” yet because the nature of filmmaking is that it requires a lot of money, and is connected to fame, and produces images that can spread with iconic power, Godard was an outsider who was also an insider; a poet of cinema who made himself a celebrity; an artist who bridged the larger-than-life, old-school ethos of movies with the forbidding imperatives of the avant-garde.
All of that contradiction is on full display, with a luscious kind of resonance, in “Godard par Godard,” an hour-long documentary, written by Frédéric Bonnaud and directed by Florence Platarets, that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival today as a tribute to Godard, eight months after his death on September 13, 2022. The documentary was shown along with Godard’s final film,...
All of that contradiction is on full display, with a luscious kind of resonance, in “Godard par Godard,” an hour-long documentary, written by Frédéric Bonnaud and directed by Florence Platarets, that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival today as a tribute to Godard, eight months after his death on September 13, 2022. The documentary was shown along with Godard’s final film,...
- 5/22/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Editor's Note: RogerEbert.com is proud to reprint Roger Ebert's 1978 entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica publication "The Great Ideas Today," part of "The Great Books of the Western World." Reprinted with permission from The Great Ideas Today ©1978 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
It's a measure of how completely the Internet has transformed communication that I need to explain, for the benefit of some younger readers, what encyclopedias were: bound editions summing up all available knowledge, delivered to one's home in handsome bound editions. The "Great Books" series zeroed in on books about history, poetry, natural science, math and other fields of study; the "Great Ideas" series was meant to tie all the ideas together, and that was the mission given to Roger when he undertook this piece about film.
Given the venue he was writing for, it's probably wisest to look at Roger's long, wide-ranging piece as a snapshot of the...
It's a measure of how completely the Internet has transformed communication that I need to explain, for the benefit of some younger readers, what encyclopedias were: bound editions summing up all available knowledge, delivered to one's home in handsome bound editions. The "Great Books" series zeroed in on books about history, poetry, natural science, math and other fields of study; the "Great Ideas" series was meant to tie all the ideas together, and that was the mission given to Roger when he undertook this piece about film.
Given the venue he was writing for, it's probably wisest to look at Roger's long, wide-ranging piece as a snapshot of the...
- 2/12/2015
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language has not only scored an impressive opening weekend per screen average, it's also prompting many, David Bordwell among them, to see it a second or third time. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Godard on Prénom Carmen (1983) and Jonathan Rosenbaum on Godard in the 90s—and on Numéro Deux (1975). Plus Peter Bogdanovich on Vincente Minnelli, Bilge Ebiri on Jack Clayton, David Kalat on Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows (1958), Jonathan Yardley on John Cleese and Mark Cousins, Tilda Swinton and Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux's open letter of protest to Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. » - David Hudson...
- 11/3/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language has not only scored an impressive opening weekend per screen average, it's also prompting many, David Bordwell among them, to see it a second or third time. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Godard on Prénom Carmen (1983) and Jonathan Rosenbaum on Godard in the 90s—and on Numéro Deux (1975). Plus Peter Bogdanovich on Vincente Minnelli, Bilge Ebiri on Jack Clayton, David Kalat on Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows (1958), Jonathan Yardley on John Cleese and Mark Cousins, Tilda Swinton and Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux's open letter of protest to Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. » - David Hudson...
- 11/3/2014
- Keyframe
Jean-Luc Godard, and more specifically his 1965 film Pierrot le Fou, literally changed my life, and set me on a path toward intense and everlasting cinephilia. Since the first time I saw that film, it has remained my favorite movie of all time and Godard my favorite director. So when I finally had the chance to see Film socialisme in 2010, his first feature film in six years, I had high hopes that the old master was going to yet again bring something new to the table. Those hopes were assuredly met. I considered the film the best of that year and still believe it is an astonishing movie, rife with so much of what defines Godard in this is fourth(?), fifth(?), in any case, current, phase of his career.
The first words of Film socialisme, at least according to the “Navajo English” subtitles, are “money – public – water.” Literally, this refers to...
The first words of Film socialisme, at least according to the “Navajo English” subtitles, are “money – public – water.” Literally, this refers to...
- 10/25/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Thoughts occasioned by the release of Adieu au langage
Godard and the Permanently New
One “It has to face the men of the time and to meet/The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has/To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, and, like an insatiable actor, slowly and/With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat…”
Two “…no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. …what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it….novelty is better than repetition.”
-and modernity, novelty, superventing contemporareity in his cinema begins with a re-evaluation of screen time, direction, and space and his satisfactions at segmenting space as determined by...
Godard and the Permanently New
One “It has to face the men of the time and to meet/The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has/To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, and, like an insatiable actor, slowly and/With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat…”
Two “…no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. …what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it….novelty is better than repetition.”
-and modernity, novelty, superventing contemporareity in his cinema begins with a re-evaluation of screen time, direction, and space and his satisfactions at segmenting space as determined by...
- 6/4/2014
- by Jim Robison
- Trailers from Hell
Photo: Alix Cléo Roubaud, Portrait de Jean Eustache, 1981 © Fonds Alix Cléo Roubaud
An interview with Jean Eustache conducted by Philippe Haudiquet and originally published in La Revue du Cinéma, no. 250, May 1971. Translation by Ted Fendt.
Philippe Haudiquet: You’ve made four films that to me seemed to indicate a personal path in our cinema. Now, you want to do something completely different. Where does this break between the films you directed before and the last one come from?
Jean Eustache: I decided to break with the films that I was making because they were suffocating me.
Ph: Why were they suffocating you? Wasn’t it a kind of cinema that had already broken away from the system, as much in terms of how it was made (production and direction) as by its choice of subject matter?
Je: Yeah, but as I was working more in an artisanal manner,...
An interview with Jean Eustache conducted by Philippe Haudiquet and originally published in La Revue du Cinéma, no. 250, May 1971. Translation by Ted Fendt.
Philippe Haudiquet: You’ve made four films that to me seemed to indicate a personal path in our cinema. Now, you want to do something completely different. Where does this break between the films you directed before and the last one come from?
Jean Eustache: I decided to break with the films that I was making because they were suffocating me.
Ph: Why were they suffocating you? Wasn’t it a kind of cinema that had already broken away from the system, as much in terms of how it was made (production and direction) as by its choice of subject matter?
Je: Yeah, but as I was working more in an artisanal manner,...
- 9/24/2012
- MUBI
"In 1962 Pier Paolo Pasolini received a suspended sentence for his allegedly blasphemous contribution to the portmanteau film Rogopag, a brilliant sketch satirizing biblical movies," writes Philip French in his brief review of the new Masters of Cinema release of The Gospel According to St Matthew in today's Observer. "Two years later the gay, Marxist atheist showed the world how a life of Christ should be made, and it is a magnificent achievement, far superior to Scorsese's or Gibson's films."
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
- 4/8/2012
- MUBI
“I didn’t know who to believe—my parents or the television set.” — We Can’t Go Home Again ('73 cut)
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
“On the one hand, Ray has a knack for disrupting smooth sequences with odd interpolations… a sense of trying to carve out some space for immediacy and spontaneity inside institutionalized patterns of construction. But against this is a proclivity for heavy symbolic underlining and general schematization, which place the individual movements of the films within thickly determined contours” — B. Kite, Bigger Than Life: Somewhere in Suburbia
“Salvation is a private affair.” — Jacques Rivette, On Imagination
Some thoughts crystallized around We Can’t Go Home Again.
***
In retrospect, Nicholas Ray can seem as much like the last great Hollywood romantic as the first serious parodist of a generation, Godard, Oshima, Ruiz, still to come: anatomizing genre structure and hallmarks not to show the extension of personal philosophy into any...
- 10/4/2011
- MUBI
Apparently Amer is 'an enigma and only the spectator has the key'. I'm sorry, but if I wanted a Diy plot I'd have written my own
Who was it who said that story is just a trick to keep you watching? I was reminded of this as I stared at Amer, trying in vain to get a handle on the stream of beautiful and startling imagery. But even beautiful and startling can wear thin after a while. If I were a civilian, as opposed to someone trying to write for a living, I would have run up the white flag long before those 87 minutes were up, having already suffered through too much narrative-free pain (Jean-Luc Godard's Numéro Deux!) in the 1970s, when I vowed never again to venture into plotless territory unless the ordeal was softened by sexual or financial reward.
Amer, co-directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani,...
Who was it who said that story is just a trick to keep you watching? I was reminded of this as I stared at Amer, trying in vain to get a handle on the stream of beautiful and startling imagery. But even beautiful and startling can wear thin after a while. If I were a civilian, as opposed to someone trying to write for a living, I would have run up the white flag long before those 87 minutes were up, having already suffered through too much narrative-free pain (Jean-Luc Godard's Numéro Deux!) in the 1970s, when I vowed never again to venture into plotless territory unless the ordeal was softened by sexual or financial reward.
Amer, co-directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani,...
- 1/6/2011
- by Anne Billson
- The Guardian - Film News
Avant-garde French cinematographer at the heart of the new wave
For 45 years, the French cinematographer William Lubtchansky, who has died of heart disease aged 72, put his talents at the disposal of the most challenging, intellectually inquiring, uncompromisingly brilliant film directors who emerged with the French new wave. Lubtchansky worked with Jean-Luc Godard (six times), although they fell out, made up and fell out again; the husband and wife team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (11 times); and Jacques Rivette (14 times).
Although these directors differed in their approaches and sensibilities, they were united in their irreverent, generally unsentimental treatment of character, their existential attitude to society and to human behaviour, and their experiments with filmic space and time. They questioned cinema itself by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making and quoting from the other arts. They presented an alternative to Hollywood by consciously breaking its conventions while at the...
For 45 years, the French cinematographer William Lubtchansky, who has died of heart disease aged 72, put his talents at the disposal of the most challenging, intellectually inquiring, uncompromisingly brilliant film directors who emerged with the French new wave. Lubtchansky worked with Jean-Luc Godard (six times), although they fell out, made up and fell out again; the husband and wife team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (11 times); and Jacques Rivette (14 times).
Although these directors differed in their approaches and sensibilities, they were united in their irreverent, generally unsentimental treatment of character, their existential attitude to society and to human behaviour, and their experiments with filmic space and time. They questioned cinema itself by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making and quoting from the other arts. They presented an alternative to Hollywood by consciously breaking its conventions while at the...
- 5/12/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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