THE LOBBY CARD FOR ‘GODARD CINEMA’ AT THE FILM FORM IN NYC
The end of the year is both a time of reflection and expansion. You look back at what you’ve done and what the world has brought to your door. And, with space cleared out in your schedule, you can indulge in some delayed personal quest or find yourself in an unexpected exploration.
I had an early dentist appointment the other day. Afterwards took the subway downtown to stop by my mail drop. Got off in the West Village and ended up walking by the Film Forum, one of those gems of NYC life that, in the age of streaming, I’ve been neglecting. Jean-Luc Godard’s last film, a short piece, was playing before a documentary on his life and career titled ‘Godard Cinema.’ I’ve always loved ‘Breathless’ and ‘Contempt,’ and enjoyed his doc/political propaganda film with the Rolling Stones. But I’d never really taken in the scope of work. Armed with curiosity and time to kill, I grabbed a ticket. The next day, now in a serious Godardian mood, I found out that another great NYC cinema, the IFC Center, was screening his 1965 sci-fi noir ‘Alphaville.’ So I made sure I caught that.
Now my mind is aflame with the need to see and know more. There are so many takeaways for this short dive into Godard’s canon, but a few are worth noting.
1- As a student of film history Godard at a keen understanding of what the medium could do and, more importantly, WHAT IT HADN’T DONE. He built a visual language that drew from what came before, but found avenues that hadn’t been explored in terms of montage and sound design. There’s a section in the doc when someone describes a day on set when Godard wonders how various old masters would cover a scene. He goes down the list, describing where they would have put the camera. With that information in hand, Godard now has to find HIS WAY of shooting. It’s a real lesson in how you can develop a visual style of one’s own.
FILM FORUM LOBBY CARD FOR ‘GODARD CINEMA’
2- Godard’s use of music was quite unique. He’d put a music sting of classical music in the middle of a scene or repeat it in seemingly odd places. Sometimes he’d drop the sound out completely. Like the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, Godard had his own sense of time, which was reflected in his music use and in famous jump cuts. Music use and sound design never get the awards attention of cinematograpy. But Godard was very aware that those elements were at the very heart of cinema.
THE IFC CENTER MARQUEE IN NEW YORK
3- Alphaville is a jumble of tropes from American film noir retrofitted onto a paranoid technology thriller. It’s computer villain beats Hal from 2001 by several years. There are images in it that would be borrowed by the Matrix filmmakers. The thematic structure of its screenplay anticipates a slew of man vs machine epics to come.
There’s a lot more for me to unpack (his early embrace of video, his years in a radical creative collective, his epic Histoire Du Cinema), but this reintroduction to Godard gives me a lot to see and read. Moreover it means my holidays won’t be consumed with just watching Oscar contenders and Holiday “entertainment.”
ANNA KARINA AND JEAN-LUC GODARD ON THE SET OF ‘ALPHAVILLE’
EDDIE CONSTANTINE AND ANNA KARINA IN A SCENE FROM ‘ALPHAVILLE’
IMAGE FROM ‘ALPHAVILLE’
AKIM TAMIROFF AND EDDIE CONSTANTINE IN A SCENE FROM ‘ALPHAVILLE’
I urge all my readers to take this end of year break to wander down some street you haven’t in a while, open up that book you’ve been meaning read or to just call an old friend. Then see where that takes you heading into 2024.