Sunday, April 30, 2017
120 - The 400 Blows, 1959, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
120 - The 400 Blows, 1959, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.
The French phrase Les Quatre Cents Coups literally translates to "the four hundred blows," with le coup being a blow or stroke or shot or trick.
In the French it is an idiomatic expression beginning with the verb faire. Faire is an all-purpose verb meaning "to make" or "to do," and it is used in many French expressions.
So here you have something like "to make 400 blows" or "to play 400 tricks."
A proper translation of the expression would be "to paint the town red," "to sow wild oats," "to go wild," or "to raise hell."
Since the title does not contain the verb, you could translate the movie as The Wild Oats.
The Wild Oats
We open by moving down the streets of Paris, celebrating the city to the opulent sounds of Jean Constantin's cheerful score.
The Eiffel Tower peaks out at us from between the grand old buildings and the winter trees as we pass by.
Woody Allen most famously celebrated his city in his masterpiece Manhattan, by showing its sites while playing Gershwin overtures and songs, opening with Rhapsody in Blue.
He would also drive down the city streets and look up at the architecture in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Insert title card: "Ce film est dedie a la memoire d'Andre Bazin."
This film is dedicated to the memory of Andre Bazin.
Andre Bazin founded the magazine Cahiers du Cinema. He gathered together a group of young French critics, the young Turks, and nurtured them. They defined the cinematic attitudes of a generation. Several of them became filmmakers, who then in turn became internationally and historically important.
For Francois Truffaut, it is even more personal. Andre Bazin saved his life. And gave him his life.
This film is, among other things, a fictionalized account of that rescue.
A boy is sitting in class. The boys are taking an exam. He takes a pin-up out of his desk and passes it around.
When the pin-up arrives in the hands of young Anoine Doinel, he sits it on his desk and tweaks it with his pen.
When he begins to pass it to the next boy, the teacher sees him and calls him to the front of the room.
And here we have two actors--the student and the teacher--whom we know and love.
Antoine Doinel is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud.
Leaud is about 15 years old when this movie is released. Truffaut found Leaud in a similar way that Bazin found Truffaut. Leaud will play Doinel over the next twenty years in four feature films and one short film. We will see all of them.
We have already seen Jean-Pierre Leaud in Alphaville, Masculin-Feminin, Made in USA, and Weekend, all films by Jean-Luc Godard. Now we will see him in films by Francois Truffaut.
Leaud is 72 and is still working. He has two movies listed as coming out in 2017.
The Teacher is played by Guy Decomble.
Guy Decomble is an actor's actor.
We have seen him in The Human Beast (1938) as a guard at the train station; in Jour de Fete (1950), as Roger, a local who teases Jacques Tati's character Francois with his bicycle at the fair; in Bob le Flambeur (1956), as the police commissioner who has a long-standing relationship with the gambler Bob, and who tries to help him since Bob once saved his life; and as the oddball philosopher bookseller in Les Cousins (1959). Here Decomble is the clueless, put-upon, overly-strict teacher who plays a role in defining Antoine Doinel's youth and the choices he will make in search of freedom.
His character is credited as "Petite Feuille," the French Teacher. "Petite Feuille" literally means "little leaf" or "little sheet," but is taken to mean "Little Quiz." A nickname through the eyes of the boys. And how they feel about him.
Antoine has the pin-up. He is wearing a black, ribbed turtleneck. Later he will wear a plaid jacket with the collar turned up. Wardrobe can be instrumental in defining a character. It does here.
Little Quiz calls Antoine Doinel forward.
Antoine did not initiate the passing of the pin-up. He had it in his hands for exactly 11 seconds. But he was the one who got caught.
He is told to go stand in the corner. He makes a face at the class for getting him in trouble. He does not get to finish his exam.
When the Teacher releases them to recess, he makes Antoine stay in the room.
The boys play. The boys fight. The boys laugh.
Antoine writes his protest not on the chalkboard but on the wall.
"Here poor Antoine Doinel was unfairly punished by Sourpuss (Little Quiz) for a pinup that fell from the sky. It will be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Maybe he has gone too far.
When they return the boys gather to read it. Little Quiz sees it. Little Quiz responds.
We have a young Juvenal in our class, though he doesn't know an Alexandrine from blank verse. Tomorrow you will conjugate in all the tenses of the indicative, conditional, and subjunctive, the following sentence: "I deface classroom walls, and I abuse French verse."
Teachers back then may have been strict but they sure did teach.
Little Quiz will require Antoine to clean the corner while he recites from memory and writes a French love poem on the board.
We see one young boy desperately trying to copy it down, but the ink from his dipping pen leaks and drips all over his exam book. He turns a page, and it does it again. He ends up destroying his exam book in his efforts to wipe his hands, clean up the ink spill, and find a blank page.
As the teacher describes the throes of love and passion in the poem, the boys nervously mock and embrace. Whenever he turns around they are back in their seats writing.
Someone whistles.
Little Quiz loses it. He yells at the students. He throws his chalk. He berates the boys, calls them idiots. He tells Antoine his parents will pay for his actions. He denounces them all.
What a class this year! I've known idiots before, but at least they were polite! Poor France will be in sorry shape in ten years!
He throws his paper on the floor. He cannot take it any more.
As the boys go home they talk about their lives. They surmise that everyone steals money from his parents.
Antoine is a latch-key kid. He arrives at home alone. He sits in front of the mirror. He prepares dinner.
He takes out his pen and paper and begins doing his assignment. "I deface classroom walls."
But immediately his mother comes home and begins berating him for not having bought flour when he went to the store. She uses language to belittle him, to make him feel small. She sends him back out to buy the flour.
He goes to the store to get the flour. He overhears two women gossiping about childbirth, invoking forceps, cesarean sections, and blood. He grows sick from hearing it.
He will never get to his assignment.
Things will spiral.
The 400 Blows stands in a tradition of first works, such as James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where the sensitive artist takes control of his life story and defines his own history on his own terms.
The character Antoine Doinel is exceedingly likeable. We feel for him. We cheer for him.
He will play hooky from school. He will go to the fair. He will steal. He will steal a typewriter. He will plagiarize. He will get into deeper and deeper trouble.
Will someone love him? Will anyone ever understand him? Will he find freedom?
Go, Antoine. Go.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
119 - Every Man for Himself, 1980, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
119 - Every Man for Himself, 1980, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
I want to stop naming things and start doing them.
Paul, Denise, and Isabelle.
Paul is married and has a 12-year old daughter.
He does not live with them.
He works at a Swiss television station. He is a TV host. We are in Switzerland.
He works with Denise.
He lives with Denise.
Denise, however, is restless.
Part of her job is to collect celebrities when they arrive in town.
She no longer wants to do that.
And Paul is not working out.
She wants to get away.
She wants to write a novel.
She tells Paul.
She decides to move to the country and stay at a dairy farm.
She goes.
On her bicycle.
Through the countryside.
In Slow Motion.
Wait!
She forgot to pick up a celebrity at the local college.
Marguerite Duras. Writer. Filmmaker. Coming to speak.
She asks Paul to do it.
Paul does it.
Duras does not appear.
We never see her.
We hear her.
Duras speaks.
Paul speaks.
We hear her voice. We see him talk. We hear his voice.
She tells us she makes movies.
Because if she does not, then she has nothing to do.
He agrees. He feels the same way.
He does not seem to enjoy working. He just needs to have something to do.
His name happens to be Godard. In this case, Paul Godard. Godard is Paul's last name.
As Denise moves from the city to the country, Isabelle moves from the country to the city.
She becomes a prostitute.
She meets Paul at a bar.
They spend time together.
We follow her story.
The film contains moments of encounters and close encounters.
A bellhop with Paul. Paul with Denise. Paul with Isabelle. Paul with his daughter in his mind. Isabelle with her pimp. Isabelle with her mack. Isabelle with her john. Isabelle's sister. A group.
Critics found in this film a return to form.
Godard had been spending years playing with video. Making political statements. Not making films.
Now he has made a film again. And he will continue to do so throughout the 1980s.
Godard is good at naming things.
119 - Every Man for Himself, 1980, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
I want to stop naming things and start doing them.
Paul, Denise, and Isabelle.
Paul is married and has a 12-year old daughter.
He does not live with them.
He works at a Swiss television station. He is a TV host. We are in Switzerland.
He works with Denise.
He lives with Denise.
Denise, however, is restless.
Part of her job is to collect celebrities when they arrive in town.
She no longer wants to do that.
And Paul is not working out.
She wants to get away.
She wants to write a novel.
She tells Paul.
She decides to move to the country and stay at a dairy farm.
She goes.
On her bicycle.
Through the countryside.
In Slow Motion.
Wait!
She forgot to pick up a celebrity at the local college.
Marguerite Duras. Writer. Filmmaker. Coming to speak.
She asks Paul to do it.
Paul does it.
Duras does not appear.
We never see her.
We hear her.
Duras speaks.
Paul speaks.
We hear her voice. We see him talk. We hear his voice.
She tells us she makes movies.
Because if she does not, then she has nothing to do.
He agrees. He feels the same way.
He does not seem to enjoy working. He just needs to have something to do.
His name happens to be Godard. In this case, Paul Godard. Godard is Paul's last name.
As Denise moves from the city to the country, Isabelle moves from the country to the city.
She becomes a prostitute.
She meets Paul at a bar.
They spend time together.
We follow her story.
The film contains moments of encounters and close encounters.
A bellhop with Paul. Paul with Denise. Paul with Isabelle. Paul with his daughter in his mind. Isabelle with her pimp. Isabelle with her mack. Isabelle with her john. Isabelle's sister. A group.
Critics found in this film a return to form.
Godard had been spending years playing with video. Making political statements. Not making films.
Now he has made a film again. And he will continue to do so throughout the 1980s.
Godard is good at naming things.
Friday, April 28, 2017
118 - Tout Va Bien, 1972, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Friday, April 28, 2017
118 - Tout Va Bien, 1972, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Everything Goes Well.
I want to make a film.
You need money for that.
He signs checks. Checks to the different departments. One check after another. After another.
We need stars. International stars. Yves Montand from France. Jane Fonda from America.
We need a love story. They walk in the woods. I love you. They describe what they love about one another.
We need a city. We need houses. One for Him and one for Her.
We need people. Lots of people. Workers. Middle class. Laborers. Farmers.
We need commercials. We need to sell things.
STRIKE!
Lock up the bosses.
They lock up the boss. Put him in his room. His office. Barricade the door. He has been in there for hours.
The American journalist gets in.
Her name is Suzanne. The translators type it as Susan in the subtitles. As if English does not have Suzanne.
She asks the manager what is going on. He tells her. From his point of view.
The manager takes his turn. Explains his position.
A worker takes his turn. Explains his position.
A foreman takes his turn. Explains his position.
We see the building in cross section. All the rooms on two floors with one wall removed and the camera looking in.
Like Rear Window. Like Noises Off. Kind of.
They will not let the manager take a bathroom break. Then they give him so many seconds. He cannot find the bathroom. He is about to go in his pants. They demand he return to his office. Without giving him time to go. See how that feels?
The journalist interviews the people.
More people take a turn.
One supports the Union. Talks about how the Union will help them.
Another attacks the Union. Says the Union is just as bad as management.
We are at a sausage factory. We see the assembly line. The assembly line moving the pigs. Butchering. Grinding. Making sausage.
We go to a movie set.
The American journalist's French husband is a director. A director of commercials. He is making a commercial.
His name is Jacques. Of course it is. He is French.
What is the f-stop? 3.5. Roll the sound. They play music. Two women begin dancing. Check the framing. Bring the 1000 forward. Mark where the girls' feet are. Move the two-kilo. Shine it on the door. Change the lens. Remove the 50. Put on the 75.
He wants to correct us. He says he is not a director of commercials. He is a filmmaker. Who sometimes makes commercials. The distinction is important to him.
He believes the advertising business is stupid and corrupt. But he does it anyway. For money. You have to make a living.
And this makes him morally superior how?
He says he was a screenwriter during the New Wave. He says he got sick of it. He mentions May, 1968. This was a time of radical upheaval in France. It affected him.
He got tired of making art films. He got offered to direct an American film. Based on a David Goodis novel. He rejected the offer. He thought it was stupid. He decided to make commercials instead.
(Jean-Luc Godard's counterpart Francois Truffaut did direct a film based on a David Goodis novel, 1960's Shoot the Piano Player. What is Godard saying about his colleague Truffaut?)
Jacques hems and haws. Hesitates. He seems lost. He does not know what to do with himself. With his life.
He returns to his commercial production. Godard has our camera look through the commercial camera's viewfinder for a very long time as we watch the women dance and listen to the music.
Godard wants so badly for us to see how stupid commercials are. And how stupid advertising is. And how stupid this kind of work is.
If he is trying to make the case that he has turned into a bitter old man, he is doing a good job.
Suzanne is frustrated at work. She tries to record an article. She cannot do it. She tells her producer that her work is stupid.
Back at the house. Jacques and Suzanne have an argument. She complains. They too are on an assembly line. Reduced to a formula. Work, movie, sex. Work, movie, sex. Day after day. No joy. No meaning. And it is his fault.
Jacques tells us about the revolution. We see people protesting. Committing violence. Hurting other people. Dying. He wants to make them martyrs.
We dolly down a grocery store. Watching people check out. The workers dressed in yellow. The shoppers dressed in earth tones. Down to the right. Back to the left. Down to the right. Back to the left. Down to the right.
The radicals fill the grocery carts. Try to steal the food. Try to encourage all the others to steal grocery carts full of food. "It's free! Take it!" The police come in an stop them.
Back to the beginning.
We needed to make a movie. Now we have made a movie. With Him and Her. How did it turn out? He and She are lost.
Jacques is lost.
Suzanne is lost.
Godard is lost.
118 - Tout Va Bien, 1972, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Everything Goes Well.
I want to make a film.
You need money for that.
He signs checks. Checks to the different departments. One check after another. After another.
We need stars. International stars. Yves Montand from France. Jane Fonda from America.
We need a love story. They walk in the woods. I love you. They describe what they love about one another.
We need a city. We need houses. One for Him and one for Her.
We need people. Lots of people. Workers. Middle class. Laborers. Farmers.
We need commercials. We need to sell things.
STRIKE!
Lock up the bosses.
They lock up the boss. Put him in his room. His office. Barricade the door. He has been in there for hours.
The American journalist gets in.
Her name is Suzanne. The translators type it as Susan in the subtitles. As if English does not have Suzanne.
She asks the manager what is going on. He tells her. From his point of view.
The manager takes his turn. Explains his position.
A worker takes his turn. Explains his position.
A foreman takes his turn. Explains his position.
We see the building in cross section. All the rooms on two floors with one wall removed and the camera looking in.
Like Rear Window. Like Noises Off. Kind of.
They will not let the manager take a bathroom break. Then they give him so many seconds. He cannot find the bathroom. He is about to go in his pants. They demand he return to his office. Without giving him time to go. See how that feels?
The journalist interviews the people.
More people take a turn.
One supports the Union. Talks about how the Union will help them.
Another attacks the Union. Says the Union is just as bad as management.
We are at a sausage factory. We see the assembly line. The assembly line moving the pigs. Butchering. Grinding. Making sausage.
We go to a movie set.
The American journalist's French husband is a director. A director of commercials. He is making a commercial.
His name is Jacques. Of course it is. He is French.
What is the f-stop? 3.5. Roll the sound. They play music. Two women begin dancing. Check the framing. Bring the 1000 forward. Mark where the girls' feet are. Move the two-kilo. Shine it on the door. Change the lens. Remove the 50. Put on the 75.
He wants to correct us. He says he is not a director of commercials. He is a filmmaker. Who sometimes makes commercials. The distinction is important to him.
He believes the advertising business is stupid and corrupt. But he does it anyway. For money. You have to make a living.
And this makes him morally superior how?
He says he was a screenwriter during the New Wave. He says he got sick of it. He mentions May, 1968. This was a time of radical upheaval in France. It affected him.
He got tired of making art films. He got offered to direct an American film. Based on a David Goodis novel. He rejected the offer. He thought it was stupid. He decided to make commercials instead.
(Jean-Luc Godard's counterpart Francois Truffaut did direct a film based on a David Goodis novel, 1960's Shoot the Piano Player. What is Godard saying about his colleague Truffaut?)
Jacques hems and haws. Hesitates. He seems lost. He does not know what to do with himself. With his life.
He returns to his commercial production. Godard has our camera look through the commercial camera's viewfinder for a very long time as we watch the women dance and listen to the music.
Godard wants so badly for us to see how stupid commercials are. And how stupid advertising is. And how stupid this kind of work is.
If he is trying to make the case that he has turned into a bitter old man, he is doing a good job.
Suzanne is frustrated at work. She tries to record an article. She cannot do it. She tells her producer that her work is stupid.
Back at the house. Jacques and Suzanne have an argument. She complains. They too are on an assembly line. Reduced to a formula. Work, movie, sex. Work, movie, sex. Day after day. No joy. No meaning. And it is his fault.
Jacques tells us about the revolution. We see people protesting. Committing violence. Hurting other people. Dying. He wants to make them martyrs.
We dolly down a grocery store. Watching people check out. The workers dressed in yellow. The shoppers dressed in earth tones. Down to the right. Back to the left. Down to the right. Back to the left. Down to the right.
The radicals fill the grocery carts. Try to steal the food. Try to encourage all the others to steal grocery carts full of food. "It's free! Take it!" The police come in an stop them.
Back to the beginning.
We needed to make a movie. Now we have made a movie. With Him and Her. How did it turn out? He and She are lost.
Jacques is lost.
Suzanne is lost.
Godard is lost.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
117 - Weekend, 1967, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
117 - Weekend, 1967, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Road trip!
Wait.
This road trip is not going so well.
If it is even really happening at all.
Are we in a film or reality?
Or in someone else's film?
Or in Godard's nightmare?
Or in a Hieronymus Bosch universe painted as a J Crew catalog?
Do you remember the 1970 Arthur Hiller movie The Out-of-Towners, written by Neil Simon, with a score by Quincy Jones, and starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis?
A husband and wife go on a business trip and everything goes wrong.
Well, this is not that movie.
This is nothing like that movie.
In this movie a husband and wife go on a road trip and everything goes wrong.
But everything goes wrong because the director is celebrating his own destruction of moviemaking.
Somewhat like a rockstar ceasing to play music in that moment in order to smash his guitar against the stage and then set it on fire.
Jean-Luc Godard seems to wish he could smash the camera and then set it on fire.
At least he is able to set cars on fire. Many cars. Throughout the movie.
And have people strangle each other, shoot each other, set each other on fire, get trapped under cars, casually rape each other, and finally cook and eat each other.
Yeah. This road trip has not turned out so well.
Roland and Corinne begin the trip wanting to kill each other.
But first they intend to go to Corinne's parents on their deathbed and steal their money.
Roland backs the car into the bumper of another car. A little boy is fighting him. The woman who owns it comes out and starts to strangle him. A man comes out with a machine gun and starts to shoot at them.
They get away.
They pass through a famous extended tracking shot, where cinematographer Raoul Coutard had to acquire every last piece of track for that model dolly in all of France.
So that the camera could travel the length of the road alongside Roland and Corinne.
So that we can see a long line of cars set up superficially in a traffic jam but in actuality an absurdist parade.
With one nonsensically staged pile-up after another.
This film purports to be a critique on middle-class society.
It seems more a nihilistic celebration of destruction.
Godard is shifting and about to abandon narrative filmmaking in order to pursue other means of expressing his growing political positions.
Here he paints a bitter, contemptuous, cynical portrait of humanity, and he does so with glee.
117 - Weekend, 1967, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Road trip!
Wait.
This road trip is not going so well.
If it is even really happening at all.
Are we in a film or reality?
Or in someone else's film?
Or in Godard's nightmare?
Or in a Hieronymus Bosch universe painted as a J Crew catalog?
Do you remember the 1970 Arthur Hiller movie The Out-of-Towners, written by Neil Simon, with a score by Quincy Jones, and starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis?
A husband and wife go on a business trip and everything goes wrong.
Well, this is not that movie.
This is nothing like that movie.
In this movie a husband and wife go on a road trip and everything goes wrong.
But everything goes wrong because the director is celebrating his own destruction of moviemaking.
Somewhat like a rockstar ceasing to play music in that moment in order to smash his guitar against the stage and then set it on fire.
Jean-Luc Godard seems to wish he could smash the camera and then set it on fire.
At least he is able to set cars on fire. Many cars. Throughout the movie.
And have people strangle each other, shoot each other, set each other on fire, get trapped under cars, casually rape each other, and finally cook and eat each other.
Yeah. This road trip has not turned out so well.
Roland and Corinne begin the trip wanting to kill each other.
But first they intend to go to Corinne's parents on their deathbed and steal their money.
Roland backs the car into the bumper of another car. A little boy is fighting him. The woman who owns it comes out and starts to strangle him. A man comes out with a machine gun and starts to shoot at them.
They get away.
They pass through a famous extended tracking shot, where cinematographer Raoul Coutard had to acquire every last piece of track for that model dolly in all of France.
So that the camera could travel the length of the road alongside Roland and Corinne.
So that we can see a long line of cars set up superficially in a traffic jam but in actuality an absurdist parade.
With one nonsensically staged pile-up after another.
This film purports to be a critique on middle-class society.
It seems more a nihilistic celebration of destruction.
Godard is shifting and about to abandon narrative filmmaking in order to pursue other means of expressing his growing political positions.
Here he paints a bitter, contemptuous, cynical portrait of humanity, and he does so with glee.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
116 - 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Thursday, April 26, 2017
116 - 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Sports, politics, even groceries.
So says Godard of the topics of this film.
"I wanted to include everything."
Good luck finding sports and groceries in it.
Yet he is right in the spirit of his statement. He is exploring modern life and its anxieties. And he does so in a thoughtful and penetrating way.
The struggles of trying to make ends meet. The political and social infrastructures that influence it. Architecture, construction, advertising. Words and images.
You live where you live partly because someone put a house or apartment there.
Or an entire suburb. With overwhelmingly large buildings to hold large numbers of people. From different places. Now placed together.
You go where you go partly because someone built the roads there. Going the way they go. Taking you where they take you.
You buy things partly because someone advertised them and it created a desire inside of you. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with images.
Here we see and hear these thoughts on modern life through the eyes of one woman. Juliette.
She will be our guide.
Juliette is originally from Russia. She is a resident of this new residence where people from different places are now placed together.
A new suburb in Paris. A new movie looking at this new landscape.
Not the grand old stone buildings defining the Paris we have seen in so many movies in the past few weeks.
But new buildings. Of steel and concrete. Thrown together quickly to accommodate the masses. Ugly. Functional. Colonizing. Turning cities into ant colonies. Turning people into ants.
Godard was already thinking about it in his first film, Breathless (1960). Michel Poiccard is on the run. He is with his girlfriend Patricia Franchini. They get out of the taxi. They look around the neighborhood. A grand old stone building on one side of the street. A new steel-and-concrete structure on the other side. He tells her it makes him sick.
And here in this film we see the ever-present, ever-working construction sites of construction cranes.
Juliette became a prostitute because she needed the money. She could not make it as a secretary.
A man named Robert paid for her services. Then he loved her. Then he married her. Then he provided for her.
Then they could not afford the life they were trying to live.
So he asked her to go back to work to help them make ends meet.
Robert works at a garage. As a mechanic. They have a son. He goes to school. He is writing an essay about whether boys and girls can get along, and how and why they can or cannot.
Juliette works during the day.
The men who pay for her services are as lifeless as robots. Juliette and her coworkers are robotic in return.
They seem to take no pleasure in what they are doing.
Godard presents us with a world without joy. Or whimsy. Or community. Or fellowship. A world without dreams. Or creativity. Or fun. Although there is a modicum of love.
The family stays together. Robert does his duty. Juliette does hers. They take care of each other. They take care of their son. Their son seems to feel safe and happy.
As he plays with his toy gun.
In this film life consists of making a living. Trying to get by. Influenced by the words and images around them. By architecture and advertising.
Godard thinks about the limits of language.
You see a picture. You try to describe it.
The words you choose describe only part of the picture. And not even fully the part you do try to describe. And even if you make a true statement about what you see, it can be misleading. The listener may hear your words and envision an altogether different image than the one you intend.
Godard can say that Juliette takes her car to her husband's garage. To the garage where her husband works. But when he says that he leaves out other things.
For example, there is another woman there at the garage getting her car worked on, but he does not mention that.
And the leaves on the trees are moving in the wind, but he does not mention that.
How many other things in the picture of the garage are left out in the statement he makes?
And even what he does describe is incomplete.
We are looking at the garage, and we see its shape and size and layout, its color scheme and the tools and cars and workers there. But language has only given us one word. Garage.
Godard further asks why we call it "her husband's garage." Why say his garage? Why not say the garage?
He further asks why call it a garage at all. Why does anything have the name it has. Who named it? How did we come to agree on it?
When we watch the images he shows us, we see something altogether different from what we hear in the words he speaks to us, even though we can attest that what he says is true of what we see.
Godard points his camera at advertising signs and slogans.
But he cuts them off.
He shows the sign for a Carwash, and the carwash below it. But all we see is ARWA.
It is playful. It is thought-provoking.
Godard is also thinking about politics, as always. And he is shifting his positions away from those he held at the start of his career.
As a film critic he was enamored with American films and American culture. As a new director of the Nouvelle Vague he expressed this affection.
Now he is growing more critical of America's place in the world, both politically and culturally.
Juliette herself thinks about this.
She sits in a room. She and her coworker are providing services to a man. She glances over and sees a copy of Life magazine. Vietnam is on the cover. We turn the pages. There are pictures of men dying. Brutally. Graphically. She sees the pictures while there in the room to give service to a man.
She says--
"It is a strange thing that a person living in Europe on August 17, 1966, can think of another person living in Asia."
She herself meditates on words and images.
She tries to imagine how one could have thoughts without words.
She thinks a thought with words--I'm going to pick up Robert at the Elysees-Marbeuf--and then she tries to think that same thought without using words.
The film is thoughtful. Honest. And asks good questions. And Godard does not presume to know the answers.
But he does indulge in his naïve idealism.
As someone who seems to believe we can change human nature, and human behavior, through the power of the state.
They sit at a table in a restaurant.
Someone asks, Is that the Nobel Prize winner sitting across the room? Ivanov. Apparently a fictional character.
We go to him. He talks to a woman. He defines "the Communist ethic."
He defines it as "taking care of one another, working for one's country, loving it, loving the arts and sciences."
Does Godard himself believe that?
In this film Godard has criticized Vietnam and Hiroshima, but at least one character mentions Lenin with praise.
Do the Communist concentration camps and mass murders not matter?
Do the lives of 20-60 million people murdered by Joseph Stalin in his carrying out of the ideals of Vladimir Lenin not matter?
Does the removal of human freedom and the forcible taking of other people's property not matter?
At least Godard has the woman respond to "Ivanov": "I get it. It's money. It's a great evil since you start to steal unwittingly."
This film fails to address the problem of original sin. It tries to think through complicated human social and political problems without dealing with the root of human nature.
And because it does not begin with the root of the problem, it will never come close to finding the answer.
With this film Godard leaves the Nouvelle Vague behind and begins a journey he will travel for years to come.
We will go with him for a few more films in the next few days.
Let us see where it takes us.
116 - 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Sports, politics, even groceries.
So says Godard of the topics of this film.
"I wanted to include everything."
Good luck finding sports and groceries in it.
Yet he is right in the spirit of his statement. He is exploring modern life and its anxieties. And he does so in a thoughtful and penetrating way.
The struggles of trying to make ends meet. The political and social infrastructures that influence it. Architecture, construction, advertising. Words and images.
You live where you live partly because someone put a house or apartment there.
Or an entire suburb. With overwhelmingly large buildings to hold large numbers of people. From different places. Now placed together.
You go where you go partly because someone built the roads there. Going the way they go. Taking you where they take you.
You buy things partly because someone advertised them and it created a desire inside of you. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with images.
Here we see and hear these thoughts on modern life through the eyes of one woman. Juliette.
She will be our guide.
Juliette is originally from Russia. She is a resident of this new residence where people from different places are now placed together.
A new suburb in Paris. A new movie looking at this new landscape.
Not the grand old stone buildings defining the Paris we have seen in so many movies in the past few weeks.
But new buildings. Of steel and concrete. Thrown together quickly to accommodate the masses. Ugly. Functional. Colonizing. Turning cities into ant colonies. Turning people into ants.
Godard was already thinking about it in his first film, Breathless (1960). Michel Poiccard is on the run. He is with his girlfriend Patricia Franchini. They get out of the taxi. They look around the neighborhood. A grand old stone building on one side of the street. A new steel-and-concrete structure on the other side. He tells her it makes him sick.
And here in this film we see the ever-present, ever-working construction sites of construction cranes.
Juliette became a prostitute because she needed the money. She could not make it as a secretary.
A man named Robert paid for her services. Then he loved her. Then he married her. Then he provided for her.
Then they could not afford the life they were trying to live.
So he asked her to go back to work to help them make ends meet.
Robert works at a garage. As a mechanic. They have a son. He goes to school. He is writing an essay about whether boys and girls can get along, and how and why they can or cannot.
Juliette works during the day.
The men who pay for her services are as lifeless as robots. Juliette and her coworkers are robotic in return.
They seem to take no pleasure in what they are doing.
Godard presents us with a world without joy. Or whimsy. Or community. Or fellowship. A world without dreams. Or creativity. Or fun. Although there is a modicum of love.
The family stays together. Robert does his duty. Juliette does hers. They take care of each other. They take care of their son. Their son seems to feel safe and happy.
As he plays with his toy gun.
In this film life consists of making a living. Trying to get by. Influenced by the words and images around them. By architecture and advertising.
Godard thinks about the limits of language.
You see a picture. You try to describe it.
The words you choose describe only part of the picture. And not even fully the part you do try to describe. And even if you make a true statement about what you see, it can be misleading. The listener may hear your words and envision an altogether different image than the one you intend.
Godard can say that Juliette takes her car to her husband's garage. To the garage where her husband works. But when he says that he leaves out other things.
For example, there is another woman there at the garage getting her car worked on, but he does not mention that.
And the leaves on the trees are moving in the wind, but he does not mention that.
How many other things in the picture of the garage are left out in the statement he makes?
And even what he does describe is incomplete.
We are looking at the garage, and we see its shape and size and layout, its color scheme and the tools and cars and workers there. But language has only given us one word. Garage.
Godard further asks why we call it "her husband's garage." Why say his garage? Why not say the garage?
He further asks why call it a garage at all. Why does anything have the name it has. Who named it? How did we come to agree on it?
When we watch the images he shows us, we see something altogether different from what we hear in the words he speaks to us, even though we can attest that what he says is true of what we see.
Godard points his camera at advertising signs and slogans.
But he cuts them off.
He shows the sign for a Carwash, and the carwash below it. But all we see is ARWA.
It is playful. It is thought-provoking.
Godard is also thinking about politics, as always. And he is shifting his positions away from those he held at the start of his career.
As a film critic he was enamored with American films and American culture. As a new director of the Nouvelle Vague he expressed this affection.
Now he is growing more critical of America's place in the world, both politically and culturally.
Juliette herself thinks about this.
She sits in a room. She and her coworker are providing services to a man. She glances over and sees a copy of Life magazine. Vietnam is on the cover. We turn the pages. There are pictures of men dying. Brutally. Graphically. She sees the pictures while there in the room to give service to a man.
She says--
"It is a strange thing that a person living in Europe on August 17, 1966, can think of another person living in Asia."
She herself meditates on words and images.
She tries to imagine how one could have thoughts without words.
She thinks a thought with words--I'm going to pick up Robert at the Elysees-Marbeuf--and then she tries to think that same thought without using words.
The film is thoughtful. Honest. And asks good questions. And Godard does not presume to know the answers.
But he does indulge in his naïve idealism.
As someone who seems to believe we can change human nature, and human behavior, through the power of the state.
They sit at a table in a restaurant.
Someone asks, Is that the Nobel Prize winner sitting across the room? Ivanov. Apparently a fictional character.
We go to him. He talks to a woman. He defines "the Communist ethic."
He defines it as "taking care of one another, working for one's country, loving it, loving the arts and sciences."
Does Godard himself believe that?
In this film Godard has criticized Vietnam and Hiroshima, but at least one character mentions Lenin with praise.
Do the Communist concentration camps and mass murders not matter?
Do the lives of 20-60 million people murdered by Joseph Stalin in his carrying out of the ideals of Vladimir Lenin not matter?
Does the removal of human freedom and the forcible taking of other people's property not matter?
At least Godard has the woman respond to "Ivanov": "I get it. It's money. It's a great evil since you start to steal unwittingly."
This film fails to address the problem of original sin. It tries to think through complicated human social and political problems without dealing with the root of human nature.
And because it does not begin with the root of the problem, it will never come close to finding the answer.
With this film Godard leaves the Nouvelle Vague behind and begins a journey he will travel for years to come.
We will go with him for a few more films in the next few days.
Let us see where it takes us.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
115 - Made in U.S.A., 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
115 - Made in U.S.A., 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
We are in Paris, but let us pretend we are in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
We are speaking French, but let us pretend we are speaking English.
We are driving Peugeots and Citroens, but let us say they are Chevys and Fords.
We are young, hip people in contemporary fashionable clothes, but let us pretend we are Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
We are making random political statements celebrating the tyranny of Communism, but let us claim we are in a nation founded on limited government and individual liberty.
We are staging bodies with laughably amateurish fake blood, but let us pretend it looks like real blood. Or just say we are doing it on purpose to subvert film grammar.
While we are at it, let us name-drop names of lots of American politicians and movie people.
Get it? Get it?
Made in U.S.A. was made in France. And looks like it. And sounds like it. And feels like it.
And it either asks you to suspend your disbelief anyway or claims it is being ironic so that it is off the hook.
Godard requires repeated viewing. And the time to decode his references. He is an acquired taste.
If you react to his shenanigans, he will view it as a compliment.
He wants to poke you.
Meanwhile, time will tell how time will treat his work.
As his references fade from the public's memory, and as his gimmicks no longer seem fresh and clever, will future generations continue to embrace him?
He will always have a place in film history, but will it grow more marginalized, pushed into a corner reserved for academic specialists?
Or will he continue to come back in waves as new generations discover him and find ways of appropriating his ideas, as someone like Tarantino has done?
At least the film is pretty. The colors are nice. Filmed again by Raoul Coutard. In Eastmancolor. We pan across a garden, the flowers all in bloom.
Paula wears a sweater dress covered in colorful squares.
If she stood in front of the Partridge Family's bus, you would not see her. Except for her dismembered head.
And we have every right to smash ideas and images together like that.
Godard himself does. He pairs Walt Disney and blood in this film.
And he blesses Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller for inspiring him to do so.
So we can pair the Partridge Family and camouflage. The deconstructed pop image as anarchist revolt!
(In other words, make a meaningless statement and demand your reader decode it.)
Insert title card:
Bam!
115 - Made in U.S.A., 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
We are in Paris, but let us pretend we are in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
We are speaking French, but let us pretend we are speaking English.
We are driving Peugeots and Citroens, but let us say they are Chevys and Fords.
We are young, hip people in contemporary fashionable clothes, but let us pretend we are Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
We are making random political statements celebrating the tyranny of Communism, but let us claim we are in a nation founded on limited government and individual liberty.
We are staging bodies with laughably amateurish fake blood, but let us pretend it looks like real blood. Or just say we are doing it on purpose to subvert film grammar.
While we are at it, let us name-drop names of lots of American politicians and movie people.
Get it? Get it?
Made in U.S.A. was made in France. And looks like it. And sounds like it. And feels like it.
And it either asks you to suspend your disbelief anyway or claims it is being ironic so that it is off the hook.
Godard requires repeated viewing. And the time to decode his references. He is an acquired taste.
If you react to his shenanigans, he will view it as a compliment.
He wants to poke you.
Meanwhile, time will tell how time will treat his work.
As his references fade from the public's memory, and as his gimmicks no longer seem fresh and clever, will future generations continue to embrace him?
He will always have a place in film history, but will it grow more marginalized, pushed into a corner reserved for academic specialists?
Or will he continue to come back in waves as new generations discover him and find ways of appropriating his ideas, as someone like Tarantino has done?
At least the film is pretty. The colors are nice. Filmed again by Raoul Coutard. In Eastmancolor. We pan across a garden, the flowers all in bloom.
Paula wears a sweater dress covered in colorful squares.
If she stood in front of the Partridge Family's bus, you would not see her. Except for her dismembered head.
And we have every right to smash ideas and images together like that.
Godard himself does. He pairs Walt Disney and blood in this film.
And he blesses Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller for inspiring him to do so.
So we can pair the Partridge Family and camouflage. The deconstructed pop image as anarchist revolt!
(In other words, make a meaningless statement and demand your reader decode it.)
Insert title card:
Bam!
Monday, April 24, 2017
114 - Masculin-Feminin, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Monday, April 24, 2017
114 - Masculin-Feminin, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Will you marry me?
We'll discuss it later. I'm in a rush.
She shakes his hand and leaves.
Oops.
Congratulations, buddy.
How would you feel if you proposed and she was in a hurry to leave?
Madeleine is about to release her first single. She dreams of being a successful singer.
Paul has picked an awkward moment to propose.
Somehow we are not worried for him. He loves her. She knows it. She likes it. She tells us in voice-over.
She is just working on her career at this moment.
On the other hand . . .
He is a little bit uptight. In fact, when he first asked her out she said No. And he asked if she were afraid that he might come on too strongly, and she said Yes.
They go dancing. She smiles. If he could just have a good time, then she would have a good time with him.
They get drinks. Him and her and her girlfriend.
She orders an Orangina.
He orders a Cassis with mineral water.
Do you know what those are?
He apologizes about before. She blows it off. He grows more uptight.
Her girlfriend recommends they leave.
They leave him with the bill.
A blonde arrives. Orders a Coke. Asks if he would like to take pictures with her.
In the photo booth.
They enter. She propositions him. Oh, it's that. He does not want to pay what she is asking. He turns her down.
He goes into the next booth. Where you can record a record. He records a record for Madeleine. Expressing how he feels.
Paul is a young idealist.
At the beginning of the movie, he had just finished his duty in the French army and was beginning to pursue radical politics.
He met Madeleine in a restaurant. They talked and she helped him get a job with Marcel.
One day he asked her out, and it turned into a touching, honest conversation about what men and women want.
She spoke openly to him. Honestly. And smiled a cute smile with bright eyes and happy teeth. She was adorable.
There was something disarming about her. Unguarded. Authentic. And true.
And that scene is one of Godard's memorable scenes.
So honest. So familiar. So human.
The actors took their time. And they told the truth.
Now Paul is in this record booth. Recording a spoken record. Expressing himself. Waxing intense. Going off.
He takes the record. We do not know if he ever gives it to her.
He walks past the pinball machines. A young man playing pinball pulls a knife on him. Backs him out. Threatens him. Then stabs himself and falls as blood flows from his belly. Paul catches him and we cut to another scene as though nothing ever happened. That is a Godardian moment. The middle of three like this in the film. Earlier a man and woman had a custody fight in the background of a restaurant while our protagonists were eating. He took the son outside. She followed him outside and shot him on the sidewalk, in front of the boy. Later, a man will douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire, offscreen.
Paul talks to his friend. Tells him his lovetrouble. His friend gives advice.
And introduces him to Bob Dylan. Paul has never heard of Dylan. He is new to him. This is his generation. 1966 in France.
Throughout the film Godard inserts title cards with political statements and sound effects.
Or people making statements in voiceover.
For example--
We can suppose that 20 years from now every citizen will wear a small electrical device that can arouse the body to pleasure and sexual satisfaction.
Really?
This may remind you that in 1973 Woody Allen would come out with the Orgasmatron in his sci-fi comedy film Sleeper.
It is 1966. 20 years from now was 1986. How did that turn out? It is now over 50 years from now. We still do not see it.
But we can see the anxiety over technology. They were feeling it then. How do we feel it today?
Here is another one--
Give us a TV set and a car, but deliver us from liberty.
An ironic statement considering Godard's political leanings.
But true of human behavior.
Paul has dinner with Elisabeth. She explains why Madeleine is cautious with him.
She is afraid she will get pregnant.
Paul maintains that he is old enough to avoid that. Interruptus.
Not me, she says. I use a thingamajig.
What is that?
An invention from America.
Madeleine thinks it is indecent.
This film is a time capsule of the time. Of invention. Of music. Of the sexual revolution.
Madeleine enters and announces her song "Pinball Champ" is No. 6 in Japan, behind The Beatles, France Gall, and Bob Dylan.
There is that name again. Dylan.
And that other name. The song title. "Pinball Champ." It is 1966. The Who's "Pinball Wizard" came out in 1969. The movie Tommy, with Elton John's version, came out in 1975.
Was there a connection?
Did Pete Townsend know this movie?
Chantal Goya, the young woman who plays Madeleine, is a pop singer in real life. A Ye-Ye singer. Ever hear of that? Look it up.
And she really does have a hit in Japan while making this movie. And she has three hits in France. And they are on the soundtrack of this movie. And one of them is "If You Win at Pinball." The other two are "Be Nice" and "Leave Me Alone."
They meet at a coffee shop. They see Brigitte Bardot talking to her director about her next movie.
They go see a movie.
Paul goes up to the projection booth to correct them as to how they are showing it. The projectionist has the aspect ratio wrong. Paul knows it. He can see it. He cannot stand it. He wants the experience of watching a movie to be perfect.
After he corrects the projectionist, he takes the time to spray-paint graffiti on the back wall of the theater. Then he reenters. Then he explains the following to us.
We went to the movies often.
The screen would light up and we'd feel a thrill.
But Madeleine and I were usually disappointed. The images were dated and jumpy.
Marilyn Monroe had aged badly.
We felt sad. It wasn't the movie of our dreams.
It wasn't that total film we carried inside ourselves.
That film we would have liked to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.
Paul takes it personally.
It seems personal for Godard.
This feels like the film Godard has wanted to make.
It is his film.
* * * * *
Jean-Pierre Leaud is Francois Truffaut's leading man.
Here Jean-Luc Godard borrows him for his own film.
No problem. Jean-Paul Belmondo is Jean-Luc Godard's leading man.
Francois Truffaut will borrow him for Mississippi Mermaid.
Of course we have already seen Jean-Pierre Melville borrow him for two films, Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and Le Doulos (1963).
The film is based on Guy De Maupassant's short stories "Paul's Mistress" and "The Signal."
Pauline Kael wrote a masterful review of this film. It is worth finding and reading.
114 - Masculin-Feminin, 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Will you marry me?
We'll discuss it later. I'm in a rush.
She shakes his hand and leaves.
Oops.
Congratulations, buddy.
How would you feel if you proposed and she was in a hurry to leave?
Madeleine is about to release her first single. She dreams of being a successful singer.
Paul has picked an awkward moment to propose.
Somehow we are not worried for him. He loves her. She knows it. She likes it. She tells us in voice-over.
She is just working on her career at this moment.
On the other hand . . .
He is a little bit uptight. In fact, when he first asked her out she said No. And he asked if she were afraid that he might come on too strongly, and she said Yes.
They go dancing. She smiles. If he could just have a good time, then she would have a good time with him.
They get drinks. Him and her and her girlfriend.
She orders an Orangina.
He orders a Cassis with mineral water.
Do you know what those are?
He apologizes about before. She blows it off. He grows more uptight.
Her girlfriend recommends they leave.
They leave him with the bill.
A blonde arrives. Orders a Coke. Asks if he would like to take pictures with her.
In the photo booth.
They enter. She propositions him. Oh, it's that. He does not want to pay what she is asking. He turns her down.
He goes into the next booth. Where you can record a record. He records a record for Madeleine. Expressing how he feels.
Paul is a young idealist.
At the beginning of the movie, he had just finished his duty in the French army and was beginning to pursue radical politics.
He met Madeleine in a restaurant. They talked and she helped him get a job with Marcel.
One day he asked her out, and it turned into a touching, honest conversation about what men and women want.
She spoke openly to him. Honestly. And smiled a cute smile with bright eyes and happy teeth. She was adorable.
There was something disarming about her. Unguarded. Authentic. And true.
And that scene is one of Godard's memorable scenes.
So honest. So familiar. So human.
The actors took their time. And they told the truth.
Now Paul is in this record booth. Recording a spoken record. Expressing himself. Waxing intense. Going off.
He takes the record. We do not know if he ever gives it to her.
He walks past the pinball machines. A young man playing pinball pulls a knife on him. Backs him out. Threatens him. Then stabs himself and falls as blood flows from his belly. Paul catches him and we cut to another scene as though nothing ever happened. That is a Godardian moment. The middle of three like this in the film. Earlier a man and woman had a custody fight in the background of a restaurant while our protagonists were eating. He took the son outside. She followed him outside and shot him on the sidewalk, in front of the boy. Later, a man will douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire, offscreen.
Paul talks to his friend. Tells him his lovetrouble. His friend gives advice.
And introduces him to Bob Dylan. Paul has never heard of Dylan. He is new to him. This is his generation. 1966 in France.
Throughout the film Godard inserts title cards with political statements and sound effects.
Or people making statements in voiceover.
For example--
We can suppose that 20 years from now every citizen will wear a small electrical device that can arouse the body to pleasure and sexual satisfaction.
Really?
This may remind you that in 1973 Woody Allen would come out with the Orgasmatron in his sci-fi comedy film Sleeper.
It is 1966. 20 years from now was 1986. How did that turn out? It is now over 50 years from now. We still do not see it.
But we can see the anxiety over technology. They were feeling it then. How do we feel it today?
Here is another one--
Give us a TV set and a car, but deliver us from liberty.
An ironic statement considering Godard's political leanings.
But true of human behavior.
Paul has dinner with Elisabeth. She explains why Madeleine is cautious with him.
She is afraid she will get pregnant.
Paul maintains that he is old enough to avoid that. Interruptus.
Not me, she says. I use a thingamajig.
What is that?
An invention from America.
Madeleine thinks it is indecent.
This film is a time capsule of the time. Of invention. Of music. Of the sexual revolution.
Madeleine enters and announces her song "Pinball Champ" is No. 6 in Japan, behind The Beatles, France Gall, and Bob Dylan.
There is that name again. Dylan.
And that other name. The song title. "Pinball Champ." It is 1966. The Who's "Pinball Wizard" came out in 1969. The movie Tommy, with Elton John's version, came out in 1975.
Was there a connection?
Did Pete Townsend know this movie?
Chantal Goya, the young woman who plays Madeleine, is a pop singer in real life. A Ye-Ye singer. Ever hear of that? Look it up.
And she really does have a hit in Japan while making this movie. And she has three hits in France. And they are on the soundtrack of this movie. And one of them is "If You Win at Pinball." The other two are "Be Nice" and "Leave Me Alone."
They meet at a coffee shop. They see Brigitte Bardot talking to her director about her next movie.
They go see a movie.
Paul goes up to the projection booth to correct them as to how they are showing it. The projectionist has the aspect ratio wrong. Paul knows it. He can see it. He cannot stand it. He wants the experience of watching a movie to be perfect.
After he corrects the projectionist, he takes the time to spray-paint graffiti on the back wall of the theater. Then he reenters. Then he explains the following to us.
We went to the movies often.
The screen would light up and we'd feel a thrill.
But Madeleine and I were usually disappointed. The images were dated and jumpy.
Marilyn Monroe had aged badly.
We felt sad. It wasn't the movie of our dreams.
It wasn't that total film we carried inside ourselves.
That film we would have liked to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.
Paul takes it personally.
It seems personal for Godard.
This feels like the film Godard has wanted to make.
It is his film.
* * * * *
Jean-Pierre Leaud is Francois Truffaut's leading man.
Here Jean-Luc Godard borrows him for his own film.
No problem. Jean-Paul Belmondo is Jean-Luc Godard's leading man.
Francois Truffaut will borrow him for Mississippi Mermaid.
Of course we have already seen Jean-Pierre Melville borrow him for two films, Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and Le Doulos (1963).
The film is based on Guy De Maupassant's short stories "Paul's Mistress" and "The Signal."
Pauline Kael wrote a masterful review of this film. It is worth finding and reading.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
113 - Alphaville, 1965, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
113 - Alphaville, 1965, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Before 007, there was 003.
His name is Caution. Lemmy Caution. Agent 003. From the Outlands.
Sent into Alphaville to recover agent Henri Dickson, assassinate the founder of Alphaville, Professor Vonbraun, and destroy its computer. Alpha 60.
He arrives in the city. In what is the future to us.
Technology has finally won.
Everything must be perfectly logical.
No more emotions.
No more intuition.
No more spirit.
No more love.
People behave like robots.
If they behave illogically, then they are executed.
A Geisha-like woman is assigned to him at the hotel to attend to him.
She is Beatrice, Seductress, First Class.
Quite a different Beatrice from the one who guides Dante on his journey.
Lemmy, under the alias of journalist Ivan Johnson, is not interested.
He throws her out. He kills the men who have infiltrated his hotel room to attack him.
He begins his mission.
He will meet Vonbraun's daughter. He will fall in love with her.
She, however, does not know what love is. She has never heard of it. She has never met her father.
Will she discover love through Lemmy? Will she fall in love with him? Will they break the curse?
Lemmy Caution is a character created by Peter Cheyney, appearing in ten novels published in the 1930s and 1940s.
He appears in more than a dozen feature films, both French and German, all played by Eddie Constantine.
The character is smart, confident, good at what he does, and good with women. Whereas 007 drinks a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, 003 drinks whisky and smokes.
Eddie Constantine starred as Lemmy Caution in nine films from 1952 to 1963 before playing him here in 1965 in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville.
Godard changed the character so much that audiences did not recognize him, even though it was still Constantine, and the movie did poorly at the box office.
Constantine would continue to play the character for other directors.
The film has grown in acclaim over the years, standing in a line of futuristic, dystopian science-fiction films.
And films where robots talk.
113 - Alphaville, 1965, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Before 007, there was 003.
His name is Caution. Lemmy Caution. Agent 003. From the Outlands.
Sent into Alphaville to recover agent Henri Dickson, assassinate the founder of Alphaville, Professor Vonbraun, and destroy its computer. Alpha 60.
He arrives in the city. In what is the future to us.
Technology has finally won.
Everything must be perfectly logical.
No more emotions.
No more intuition.
No more spirit.
No more love.
People behave like robots.
If they behave illogically, then they are executed.
A Geisha-like woman is assigned to him at the hotel to attend to him.
She is Beatrice, Seductress, First Class.
Quite a different Beatrice from the one who guides Dante on his journey.
Lemmy, under the alias of journalist Ivan Johnson, is not interested.
He throws her out. He kills the men who have infiltrated his hotel room to attack him.
He begins his mission.
He will meet Vonbraun's daughter. He will fall in love with her.
She, however, does not know what love is. She has never heard of it. She has never met her father.
Will she discover love through Lemmy? Will she fall in love with him? Will they break the curse?
Lemmy Caution is a character created by Peter Cheyney, appearing in ten novels published in the 1930s and 1940s.
He appears in more than a dozen feature films, both French and German, all played by Eddie Constantine.
The character is smart, confident, good at what he does, and good with women. Whereas 007 drinks a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, 003 drinks whisky and smokes.
Eddie Constantine starred as Lemmy Caution in nine films from 1952 to 1963 before playing him here in 1965 in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville.
Godard changed the character so much that audiences did not recognize him, even though it was still Constantine, and the movie did poorly at the box office.
Constantine would continue to play the character for other directors.
The film has grown in acclaim over the years, standing in a line of futuristic, dystopian science-fiction films.
And films where robots talk.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
112 - Band of Outsiders, 1964, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Saturday, April 21, 2017
112 - Band of Outsiders, 1964, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Franz and Arthur like to tell stories.
The one about Billy the Kid shot in the back by Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Tombstone.
The one by Jack London and life in the Alaskan wild.
The one about the lying Indian.
They quote writers.
They quote movies.
They make up their own stories.
They are, after all, named after Franz Kafka and Arthur Rimbaud.
112 - Band of Outsiders, 1964, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Franz and Arthur like to tell stories.
The one about Billy the Kid shot in the back by Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Tombstone.
The one by the American author (Poe) and the letter ("The Purloined Letter").
The one by Jack London and life in the Alaskan wild.
The one about the lying Indian.
They quote writers.
They quote movies.
They make up their own stories.
They are, after all, named after Franz Kafka and Arthur Rimbaud.
Pow!
Arthur shoots Franz. Frantz falls to the asphalt in the middle of the street. He growls in pain. Arthur gets in the car and starts the engine. Franz grabs the rear fender of the car. Arthur looks prepared to drive. He is going to drive with Franz, shot, fallen, still hanging on to the car.
Franz gets up.
Let me drive.
They are horsing around.
Three weeks earlier. A pile of money. An English class. A house by the river. A romantic girl.
Franz tells Arthur a story.
This girl in How-to-Speak-English class told me there's this dough, see. A buncha loot. Stashed in this house. By this man. He cheats the government anyway. It is not rightfully his money anyway.
Let's take it!
They fight over the girl.
Odile. She wears sweaters and pigtails.
They pass notes in class.
Wanna learn a new language?
Here is the exam.
The teacher will read aloud from Shakespeare. From Romeo and Juliet. A long passage. A long passage of Shakespearean English translated into Shakespearean French.
You have not memorized the passage in English. You have not even been assigned to read the passage in English.
You have not been told ahead of time what the teacher will read aloud during the exam.
You are hearing it in French and writing it down in English in real time.
No problem.
One student sneaks a drink from his hidden flask.
Two students look on each other's paper for help.
Arthur passes notes to Odile. Wooing her. Describing her body. And what he wants to do with it. Telling her her hair is old-fashioned.
She takes the time to take out her mirror and primp and make eyes at him as the teacher reads on.
And as the teacher reads the immortal words of two people falling in love, Arthur writes his own words of crude love in parallel.
Somehow the results of this exam just do not seem to matter.
These people have other plans.
Then Godard inserts a Godardian moment. After class a student asks the teacher how to translate "a big one million dollar movie." She tells him. He writes it down.
Arthur flirts with Odile. He talks her into letting him take her home. He takes her home.
The three friends form a gang. They are going to take the money. And run.
Odile protests. They tell her she told them about it. She says that is not what she meant. They talk her into it. She is scared.
Arthur's uncle secretly gets involved. The other two do not know about him.
The gang take the time to stop and have some fun.
Odile puts Franz's hat on her own head.
As Patricia did with Michel the other day in Breathless (1960).
They go to a café. They play music. They dance. A line dance. The Madison Dance.
Snapping their fingers. Shrugging their shoulders.
Odile's skirt swishing left and right.
They run through the Louvre.
They laugh.
They are young. Alive. Free.
And doing things for no other reason than because.
But then there is this robbery thing.
Everything will go perfectly as long as nothing goes wrong.
Everything will go wrong.
They cannot find the money.
Odile's aunt walks in on them and sees them. And knows Odile has betrayed her.
They tie her up, stuff her mouth, and put her in an armoire. They seem to have suffocated her. She seems to have died.
They do not take the money. They do run.
Franz and Odile end up in his car. They drive away from the house. They see Arthur's uncle driving toward the house.
Wait a second!
That dirty double-crosser.
They turn around.
We smell a showdown coming.
The showdown comes.
This film has had a large influence on filmmakers who came later.
Quentin Tarantino named his production company after it.
The French title of Band of Outsiders is Bande a part.
Tarantino's company is A Band Apart.
He adapted the Madison Dance into his dance sequence in Pulp Fiction.
Pauline Kael wrote an insightful review of the film for The New Republic in 1966.
She understood Godard and his place in his generation and in his time.
"Godard’s style, with its nonchalance about the fates of the characters—a style drawn from American movies and refined to an intellectual edge in post-war French philosophy and attitudes—is an American teenager’s ideal. To be hard and cool as a movie gangster yet not stupid or gross like a gangster—that’s the cool grace of the privileged, smart young."
She compares Godard in the post-WW2 age to Fitzgerald in the post-WW1 age. Fitzgerald's jazz age was about the rebellion of youth using the arts as their vocabulary. Godard's cinema age was about the rebellion of youth using the movies as their vocabulary. It was the first generation who were proud of the movies and who used the movies exclusively as their reference points.
She also articulates for us why people are frustrated by Godard even while admiring him. We know he has the potential for masterpieces but he just will not make them. She suggests that "maybe he has artistry of a different kind."
For sure.
This girl in How-to-Speak-English class told me there's this dough, see. A buncha loot. Stashed in this house. By this man. He cheats the government anyway. It is not rightfully his money anyway.
Let's take it!
They fight over the girl.
Odile. She wears sweaters and pigtails.
They pass notes in class.
Wanna learn a new language?
Here is the exam.
The teacher will read aloud from Shakespeare. From Romeo and Juliet. A long passage. A long passage of Shakespearean English translated into Shakespearean French.
You have not memorized the passage in English. You have not even been assigned to read the passage in English.
You have not been told ahead of time what the teacher will read aloud during the exam.
You are hearing it in French and writing it down in English in real time.
No problem.
One student sneaks a drink from his hidden flask.
Two students look on each other's paper for help.
Arthur passes notes to Odile. Wooing her. Describing her body. And what he wants to do with it. Telling her her hair is old-fashioned.
She takes the time to take out her mirror and primp and make eyes at him as the teacher reads on.
And as the teacher reads the immortal words of two people falling in love, Arthur writes his own words of crude love in parallel.
Somehow the results of this exam just do not seem to matter.
These people have other plans.
Then Godard inserts a Godardian moment. After class a student asks the teacher how to translate "a big one million dollar movie." She tells him. He writes it down.
Arthur flirts with Odile. He talks her into letting him take her home. He takes her home.
The three friends form a gang. They are going to take the money. And run.
Odile protests. They tell her she told them about it. She says that is not what she meant. They talk her into it. She is scared.
Arthur's uncle secretly gets involved. The other two do not know about him.
The gang take the time to stop and have some fun.
Odile puts Franz's hat on her own head.
As Patricia did with Michel the other day in Breathless (1960).
They go to a café. They play music. They dance. A line dance. The Madison Dance.
Snapping their fingers. Shrugging their shoulders.
Odile's skirt swishing left and right.
They run through the Louvre.
They laugh.
They are young. Alive. Free.
And doing things for no other reason than because.
But then there is this robbery thing.
Everything will go perfectly as long as nothing goes wrong.
Everything will go wrong.
They cannot find the money.
Odile's aunt walks in on them and sees them. And knows Odile has betrayed her.
They tie her up, stuff her mouth, and put her in an armoire. They seem to have suffocated her. She seems to have died.
They do not take the money. They do run.
Franz and Odile end up in his car. They drive away from the house. They see Arthur's uncle driving toward the house.
Wait a second!
That dirty double-crosser.
They turn around.
We smell a showdown coming.
The showdown comes.
This film has had a large influence on filmmakers who came later.
Quentin Tarantino named his production company after it.
The French title of Band of Outsiders is Bande a part.
Tarantino's company is A Band Apart.
He adapted the Madison Dance into his dance sequence in Pulp Fiction.
Pauline Kael wrote an insightful review of the film for The New Republic in 1966.
She understood Godard and his place in his generation and in his time.
"Godard’s style, with its nonchalance about the fates of the characters—a style drawn from American movies and refined to an intellectual edge in post-war French philosophy and attitudes—is an American teenager’s ideal. To be hard and cool as a movie gangster yet not stupid or gross like a gangster—that’s the cool grace of the privileged, smart young."
She compares Godard in the post-WW2 age to Fitzgerald in the post-WW1 age. Fitzgerald's jazz age was about the rebellion of youth using the arts as their vocabulary. Godard's cinema age was about the rebellion of youth using the movies as their vocabulary. It was the first generation who were proud of the movies and who used the movies exclusively as their reference points.
She also articulates for us why people are frustrated by Godard even while admiring him. We know he has the potential for masterpieces but he just will not make them. She suggests that "maybe he has artistry of a different kind."
For sure.
Friday, April 21, 2017
111 - Contempt, 1963, France/Italy. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Friday, April 21, 2017
111 - Contempt, 1963, France/Italy. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
How can you not understand something so simple?
Camille is asking her husband Paul.
Paul is a screenwriter, and he has been hired to work on an international production of The Odyssey.
The Odyssey is about Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War. The Greeks have won, and now he must return home.
When you hear the name Ulysses, you are hearing a reference to the same man. He is called Odysseus in Greek. He is called Ulysses in Latin.
He loves his wife, Penelope, and while he has been gone she has been faithful to him. Despite the many suitors who have tried to break her will.
After many adventures he arrives home. War has changed his appearance, and they do not recognize him. Penelope asks him a question to prove that he is Odysseus, a question that only her husband could answer. What is the construction of their bed? He answers. He defeats the suitors. Man and wife are united. Their marriage continues. They love one another. They end happily.
American producer Jeremy Prokosch, played by Jack Palance, is in charge of production.
German director and legend Fritz Lang, playing himself, is directing.
French writer Paul Javal, played by Michel Piccoli, is writing the script. Or trying to.
Camille, played by Brigitte Bardot, is his wife and is trying to encourage and support him.
Francesca Vanini, played by Giorgia Moll, is there to translate for everyone.
They are filming in Italy. On location and at the famous Cinecitta Studios.
Prokosch wants to add nudity to the movie to make it exciting. He is the producer. He wants to make money.
Lang wants to film the story as written. He wants to tell the story of The Odyssey. He does understand something so simple. The love and fidelity of a warrior and his wife. It will move people. It will be artistic. It will make money.
He has already filmed segments that Prokosch hates. They are too artistic for Prokosch. But they are from the script. Lang filmed exactly what was written.
Paul wants to modernize the story, make it about Odysseus' neuroses. Make it psychological. Make it complicated. Maybe he stayed away at war on purpose. Maybe he was delaying coming home to his shrewish wife.
Screenwriters, here is some advice: do not tell your wife that you want to rewrite one of the most famous classic love stories in this way--where instead of simply loving each other they really have all this hidden baggage. It might seem a little too close to home.
Paul does three things that make Camille question him.
He arrives late for their first meeting, giving the producer Prokosch time alone with Camille, to flirt with her. Is he using his wife as a bargaining chip in negotiations? She wonders.
He spends a moment alone with Francesca, the translator. They talk. He smacks her on the bottom when she leaves. Camille sees it.
He stays on the boat, where they are filming, when Prokosch goes with Camille back to the house. This will give Prokosch an opportunity to kiss Camille.
You can see the look in Camille's eyes. She wants her husband to love her, to fight for her, to be a little more jealous and protective. She wants him to stand up for their marriage.
And to make the movie.
You can also see the look in Paul's eyes. In those moments just described, he is content. He feels secure. When he leaves Camille with Prokosch, for him it is an expression of trust. He is happily doing his work. He does not expect that anything will go wrong.
As for the moment with Francesca, it is possible it means nothing to him. Other than seeming concerned about her sadness, and asking her how she is doing when they all meet at a theater to see a singer, Paul never pursues Francesca during the movie.
But Paul goes up into his head and complicates things. He wonders if he should quit the film and go back to the theater. Camille says she likes the flat where they are staying and wants to stay. So he says he will stay on the movie for her.
But he will not stop overthinking it--both the script and their marriage. She says she loves him. He questions it. They have an argument, a long argument, a long scene in the flat that evokes the underbubbling of those rocky moments in a marriage when things could go either way.
She gives him opportunities to come out of it. She is willing to drop it all and go back to one. She cheers up and says, "I love you," and tries to move on. But he belabors the point. If he could just FIGURE IT OUT. She wishes he would stop trying to figure it out and just love her and just write the movie.
Meanwhile, Fritz Lang is the hero. The one person in the movie who shows up and does his job without neurotic posturing and without drama. He shows up. He does the work. End of story.
When Paul asks him in the end, "What are you going to do?" he answers, "Finish this movie. Always finish what you start."
Always finish what you start.
The advice of an older generation. Wisdom.
Contempt is Jean-Luc Godard's fourth full feature film, and it is considered a classic.
Filmed in Italy--in Rome and on the beautiful Isle of Capri--with a big budget and in Technicolor, it shows the potential of what Jean-Luc could have been as a director.
The film is a meditation on the tension between art and commerce, but it takes too cynical a view, and it reveals the burgeoning bitterness with which Godard would work for the rest of his career.
The American producer Prokosch is not portrayed as a real human being but as a stereotype, and he is treated with contempt by the director, by Godard.
Is this a great film? For sure.
The portrayal of Paul and Camille's marriage and its decline is portrayed with nuance and honesty--undoubtedly assisted by the source material in the novel on which it is based, and by the quality of Piccoli's and Bardot's acting, both of whom turn in thoughtful and authentic performances.
But it also begins to employ the fakery to which Godard would later commit himself and for which he would become known.
There is a car crash. And its aftermath looks as phony as if staged in a high school play. And Godard does that on purpose. And celebrates it.
Earlier Lang explains to Paul that Odysseus is not a modern neurotic. He is a simple, robust man of action. He loves his wife. He returns to his wife.
Just write that and film that.
The public is not always dumber than the director. Sometimes they are smarter. Sometimes they understand art better than the director does.
Sometimes the amount of money a movie makes is not due to its being less artistic and more "mainstream," but due to its being less self-indulgent and more artistically elegant.
Hey, Godard! How can you not understand something so simple?
So it is ironic that the final scene of the film shows Fritz Lang, our hero, doing his job, finishing his film, filming The Odyssey, as the camera pans out to sea.
And the first AD, played by Godard himself, speaks one word in Italian.
When we get to David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., we will see how Lynch ends his film with this one Italian word.
Here it means, "Quiet on the set."
But here it means so much more.
Silencio.
111 - Contempt, 1963, France/Italy. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
How can you not understand something so simple?
Camille is asking her husband Paul.
Paul is a screenwriter, and he has been hired to work on an international production of The Odyssey.
The Odyssey is about Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War. The Greeks have won, and now he must return home.
When you hear the name Ulysses, you are hearing a reference to the same man. He is called Odysseus in Greek. He is called Ulysses in Latin.
He loves his wife, Penelope, and while he has been gone she has been faithful to him. Despite the many suitors who have tried to break her will.
After many adventures he arrives home. War has changed his appearance, and they do not recognize him. Penelope asks him a question to prove that he is Odysseus, a question that only her husband could answer. What is the construction of their bed? He answers. He defeats the suitors. Man and wife are united. Their marriage continues. They love one another. They end happily.
American producer Jeremy Prokosch, played by Jack Palance, is in charge of production.
German director and legend Fritz Lang, playing himself, is directing.
French writer Paul Javal, played by Michel Piccoli, is writing the script. Or trying to.
Camille, played by Brigitte Bardot, is his wife and is trying to encourage and support him.
Francesca Vanini, played by Giorgia Moll, is there to translate for everyone.
They are filming in Italy. On location and at the famous Cinecitta Studios.
Prokosch wants to add nudity to the movie to make it exciting. He is the producer. He wants to make money.
Lang wants to film the story as written. He wants to tell the story of The Odyssey. He does understand something so simple. The love and fidelity of a warrior and his wife. It will move people. It will be artistic. It will make money.
He has already filmed segments that Prokosch hates. They are too artistic for Prokosch. But they are from the script. Lang filmed exactly what was written.
Paul wants to modernize the story, make it about Odysseus' neuroses. Make it psychological. Make it complicated. Maybe he stayed away at war on purpose. Maybe he was delaying coming home to his shrewish wife.
Screenwriters, here is some advice: do not tell your wife that you want to rewrite one of the most famous classic love stories in this way--where instead of simply loving each other they really have all this hidden baggage. It might seem a little too close to home.
Paul does three things that make Camille question him.
He arrives late for their first meeting, giving the producer Prokosch time alone with Camille, to flirt with her. Is he using his wife as a bargaining chip in negotiations? She wonders.
He spends a moment alone with Francesca, the translator. They talk. He smacks her on the bottom when she leaves. Camille sees it.
He stays on the boat, where they are filming, when Prokosch goes with Camille back to the house. This will give Prokosch an opportunity to kiss Camille.
You can see the look in Camille's eyes. She wants her husband to love her, to fight for her, to be a little more jealous and protective. She wants him to stand up for their marriage.
And to make the movie.
You can also see the look in Paul's eyes. In those moments just described, he is content. He feels secure. When he leaves Camille with Prokosch, for him it is an expression of trust. He is happily doing his work. He does not expect that anything will go wrong.
As for the moment with Francesca, it is possible it means nothing to him. Other than seeming concerned about her sadness, and asking her how she is doing when they all meet at a theater to see a singer, Paul never pursues Francesca during the movie.
But Paul goes up into his head and complicates things. He wonders if he should quit the film and go back to the theater. Camille says she likes the flat where they are staying and wants to stay. So he says he will stay on the movie for her.
But he will not stop overthinking it--both the script and their marriage. She says she loves him. He questions it. They have an argument, a long argument, a long scene in the flat that evokes the underbubbling of those rocky moments in a marriage when things could go either way.
She gives him opportunities to come out of it. She is willing to drop it all and go back to one. She cheers up and says, "I love you," and tries to move on. But he belabors the point. If he could just FIGURE IT OUT. She wishes he would stop trying to figure it out and just love her and just write the movie.
Meanwhile, Fritz Lang is the hero. The one person in the movie who shows up and does his job without neurotic posturing and without drama. He shows up. He does the work. End of story.
When Paul asks him in the end, "What are you going to do?" he answers, "Finish this movie. Always finish what you start."
Always finish what you start.
The advice of an older generation. Wisdom.
Contempt is Jean-Luc Godard's fourth full feature film, and it is considered a classic.
Filmed in Italy--in Rome and on the beautiful Isle of Capri--with a big budget and in Technicolor, it shows the potential of what Jean-Luc could have been as a director.
The film is a meditation on the tension between art and commerce, but it takes too cynical a view, and it reveals the burgeoning bitterness with which Godard would work for the rest of his career.
The American producer Prokosch is not portrayed as a real human being but as a stereotype, and he is treated with contempt by the director, by Godard.
Is this a great film? For sure.
The portrayal of Paul and Camille's marriage and its decline is portrayed with nuance and honesty--undoubtedly assisted by the source material in the novel on which it is based, and by the quality of Piccoli's and Bardot's acting, both of whom turn in thoughtful and authentic performances.
But it also begins to employ the fakery to which Godard would later commit himself and for which he would become known.
There is a car crash. And its aftermath looks as phony as if staged in a high school play. And Godard does that on purpose. And celebrates it.
Earlier Lang explains to Paul that Odysseus is not a modern neurotic. He is a simple, robust man of action. He loves his wife. He returns to his wife.
Just write that and film that.
The public is not always dumber than the director. Sometimes they are smarter. Sometimes they understand art better than the director does.
Sometimes the amount of money a movie makes is not due to its being less artistic and more "mainstream," but due to its being less self-indulgent and more artistically elegant.
Hey, Godard! How can you not understand something so simple?
So it is ironic that the final scene of the film shows Fritz Lang, our hero, doing his job, finishing his film, filming The Odyssey, as the camera pans out to sea.
And the first AD, played by Godard himself, speaks one word in Italian.
When we get to David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., we will see how Lynch ends his film with this one Italian word.
Here it means, "Quiet on the set."
But here it means so much more.
Silencio.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
110 - Breathless, 1960, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
110 - Breathless, 1960, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
And here we are.
Story by Francois Truffaut.
Technical Advisor Claude Chabrol.
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
With appearances by Jean-Pierre Melville and Godard.
Jump cuts. Hand-held camera work. A jazz score. Fashion.
Frenetic, kinetic energy interwoven with lackadaisical leisure.
And that alias, Laszlo Kovacs.
This film was the watershed.
The change from one era to another.
It was Jean-Luc Godard's first film.
He was 29 years old.
How many great directors directed one of the great films their first time out?
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, 1941
John Huston, The Maltese Falcon, 1941
Nicholas Ray, They Live By Night, 1948
Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter, 1955
There are others. But Godard stands in a small class. The vast majority of directors, even the greatest ones, began by directing a film that is now forgotten, or one that is now appreciated as a decent first step.
In a few days we will see if Godard's colleague/friend/adversary Francois Truffaut stands in that small class with him.
One of the ways to gauge a film's impact on the culture is to see if it has that same impact on future generations who were not yet born when the film was made.
I saw Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction when I was in university, and I could hardly leave the theater. I felt as if I had been confronted with something I had never seen before. I was smashed in the brain.
Breathless had a similar effect on me. And I saw it more than three decades after it had had that effect on its own generation.
I watched it yesterday to write this article, And it smashed me again.
I have a larger-than-life yellow landscape-oriented poster of Breathless on the wall of my Studio 1. Not far from Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Singin' in the Rain, Giant, and Gone with the Wind.
Do not read too much into that. I have many movie posters hanging everywhere. But those are the large ones that happen to be in that section of the Studio. All of my students sit in those classes under that poster. And have for seven years.
When my nine-year-old entered the Studio yesterday, I was in the middle of the movie. He took one look at Jean Seberg with her boyish hair and her t-shirt and asked in a split second, "Is that Breathless?"
Yes.
That is Breathless.
Jean Seberg with her boyish hair and her New York Herald Tribune t-shirt. Or her sailor-striped shirt and skirt. Her pin-striped shirt. Her striped dress with white cardigan and heels. Her solid dress. Her sunglasses. His hat. His sunglasses.
It is a movie that can have that effect on you. It can take your breath away. Not in its beauty or truth or goodness or romanticism or writing, but in its differentness. Its strange style. The mysterious way in which it somehow magically hit the sweet spot, maybe to some degree in spite of Godard, and feels so inexplicably just right.
I say "in spite of," because we know he did not plan the jump cuts. And they make the movie--among other things. They were an afterthought. Done for practical purposes. Not Godard's idea but Jean-Pierre Melville's. Yet we give him credit. Godard's spirit still pervades it.
Breathless is a punch in the face. And you do not mind being punched. It wakes you up. Makes you feel as though you have been sleepwalking. Makes you want to go out and do something with yourself. With your life. Makes you want to live.
Which is ironic in light of the story line. It is not that you want to steal a car or shoot a police officer or live life on the run. But that you want life to be alive.
Some movies made people want to be actors and live the life they have seen on the screen.
This movie made people want to be directors and put the life they imagine on the screen.
Michel Poiccard stands in a Paris parking lot. Reading a newspaper. Watching the cars.
He is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. We have seen him in Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and Le Doulos (1963), and we will see him again.
Michel has a girl helping him as a lookout. When the circumstances are right, he selects a car and steals it. She wants to go with him. He tells her to get lost.
He drives out in the country. He sees two girls hitchhiking. He slows to pick them up. He decides they are not pretty enough and keeps driving.
He passes vehicles. He speeds. Two cops on bikes see him. They chase. He pulls off the road onto a dirt road in the trees. Pops the hood. Checks his distributor wire. One of the cops finds him. He finds a gun in the glove box of the car he just stole.
Boom!
We see a close-up of the gun. We see a hand holding the gun pointing one direction. We see what might be the cop falling down in the woods. We see Michel running across a field.
The physics do not work, and it will be that way throughout the film. The gun points one way. The cop falls another. The cop is standing in a different spot than the one where we just saw him. We do not even know if it is the same actor or stunt double.
In filmmaking there is something called continuity. Things need to match. They need to make sense. The Script Supervisor is responsible for checking. The department heads and their on-set representatives also check. When movies get it wrong, fans find it and point it out. IMDb has a section called Goofs.
With this movie it just does not matter. We jump in time, from a few seconds later to a few minutes later. And yet we can follow it.
Michel arrives in town.
He helps himself into the apartment of a girl he knows. She is getting ready for work. He flirts with her. She resists his advances but is willing to hang out with him. Willing to get dressed as he hangs out. He takes her money when she is not looking.
He goes out onto the street. Where Patricia, the American with the Italian name, is selling newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune.
He asks her to come with him to Rome. He is on the run, remember? She says No.
They will spend the movie spending time together, as well as some time apart, sometimes doing nothing. There is a long scene in the middle of the movie where she comes home to find him in her bed, and they sit around and talk for quite awhile.
They are young. They are trying to decide what they want in life.
Michel Poiccard will go under the name Laszlo Kovacs.
It just so happens that Laszlo Kovacs is also the name of a Hungarian-turned-American cinematographer. Just as Jean-Luc Godard was a founder of the French New Wave, so also was Laszlo Kovacs a founder of the American New Wave.
The latter Laszlo shot Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), What's Up, Doc? (1972), Paper Moon (1973), Shampoo (1975), New York, New York (1977), Ghostbusters (1984), Mask (1985), Say Anything (1989), and My Best Friend's Wedding (1997).
However, Godard did not name Belmondo's alias after the cinematographer. The cinematographer had not yet started working, nor had Godard met him. Rather, Godard named Belmondo's alias after another character he had played the previous year in a colleague's film.
Jean-Paul Belmondo played Laszlo Kovacs in Claude Chabrol's 1959 film Leda (aka A Double Tour), the film Chabrol made right after making the two we have seen, Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins (1959).
The police are on to them.
The police are closing in.
Where will this end?
But what is on their minds is not the police. Not, "Will we get caught?" But, "How do I feel about him?" "How do I feel about her?" "What do I want to do with my life?" "Do I like this musical composer?" "Do I look like Bogart?"
Watch and decide for yourself.
Does he look like Bogart?
Or does he have his own identity?
One that others have wanted to mimic ever since.
110 - Breathless, 1960, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
And here we are.
Story by Francois Truffaut.
Technical Advisor Claude Chabrol.
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
With appearances by Jean-Pierre Melville and Godard.
Jump cuts. Hand-held camera work. A jazz score. Fashion.
Frenetic, kinetic energy interwoven with lackadaisical leisure.
And that alias, Laszlo Kovacs.
This film was the watershed.
The change from one era to another.
It was Jean-Luc Godard's first film.
He was 29 years old.
How many great directors directed one of the great films their first time out?
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, 1941
John Huston, The Maltese Falcon, 1941
Nicholas Ray, They Live By Night, 1948
Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter, 1955
There are others. But Godard stands in a small class. The vast majority of directors, even the greatest ones, began by directing a film that is now forgotten, or one that is now appreciated as a decent first step.
In a few days we will see if Godard's colleague/friend/adversary Francois Truffaut stands in that small class with him.
One of the ways to gauge a film's impact on the culture is to see if it has that same impact on future generations who were not yet born when the film was made.
I saw Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction when I was in university, and I could hardly leave the theater. I felt as if I had been confronted with something I had never seen before. I was smashed in the brain.
Breathless had a similar effect on me. And I saw it more than three decades after it had had that effect on its own generation.
I watched it yesterday to write this article, And it smashed me again.
I have a larger-than-life yellow landscape-oriented poster of Breathless on the wall of my Studio 1. Not far from Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Singin' in the Rain, Giant, and Gone with the Wind.
Do not read too much into that. I have many movie posters hanging everywhere. But those are the large ones that happen to be in that section of the Studio. All of my students sit in those classes under that poster. And have for seven years.
When my nine-year-old entered the Studio yesterday, I was in the middle of the movie. He took one look at Jean Seberg with her boyish hair and her t-shirt and asked in a split second, "Is that Breathless?"
Yes.
That is Breathless.
Jean Seberg with her boyish hair and her New York Herald Tribune t-shirt. Or her sailor-striped shirt and skirt. Her pin-striped shirt. Her striped dress with white cardigan and heels. Her solid dress. Her sunglasses. His hat. His sunglasses.
It is a movie that can have that effect on you. It can take your breath away. Not in its beauty or truth or goodness or romanticism or writing, but in its differentness. Its strange style. The mysterious way in which it somehow magically hit the sweet spot, maybe to some degree in spite of Godard, and feels so inexplicably just right.
I say "in spite of," because we know he did not plan the jump cuts. And they make the movie--among other things. They were an afterthought. Done for practical purposes. Not Godard's idea but Jean-Pierre Melville's. Yet we give him credit. Godard's spirit still pervades it.
Breathless is a punch in the face. And you do not mind being punched. It wakes you up. Makes you feel as though you have been sleepwalking. Makes you want to go out and do something with yourself. With your life. Makes you want to live.
Which is ironic in light of the story line. It is not that you want to steal a car or shoot a police officer or live life on the run. But that you want life to be alive.
Some movies made people want to be actors and live the life they have seen on the screen.
This movie made people want to be directors and put the life they imagine on the screen.
Michel Poiccard stands in a Paris parking lot. Reading a newspaper. Watching the cars.
He is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. We have seen him in Leon Morin, Priest (1961) and Le Doulos (1963), and we will see him again.
Michel has a girl helping him as a lookout. When the circumstances are right, he selects a car and steals it. She wants to go with him. He tells her to get lost.
He drives out in the country. He sees two girls hitchhiking. He slows to pick them up. He decides they are not pretty enough and keeps driving.
He passes vehicles. He speeds. Two cops on bikes see him. They chase. He pulls off the road onto a dirt road in the trees. Pops the hood. Checks his distributor wire. One of the cops finds him. He finds a gun in the glove box of the car he just stole.
Boom!
We see a close-up of the gun. We see a hand holding the gun pointing one direction. We see what might be the cop falling down in the woods. We see Michel running across a field.
The physics do not work, and it will be that way throughout the film. The gun points one way. The cop falls another. The cop is standing in a different spot than the one where we just saw him. We do not even know if it is the same actor or stunt double.
In filmmaking there is something called continuity. Things need to match. They need to make sense. The Script Supervisor is responsible for checking. The department heads and their on-set representatives also check. When movies get it wrong, fans find it and point it out. IMDb has a section called Goofs.
With this movie it just does not matter. We jump in time, from a few seconds later to a few minutes later. And yet we can follow it.
Michel arrives in town.
He helps himself into the apartment of a girl he knows. She is getting ready for work. He flirts with her. She resists his advances but is willing to hang out with him. Willing to get dressed as he hangs out. He takes her money when she is not looking.
He goes out onto the street. Where Patricia, the American with the Italian name, is selling newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune.
He asks her to come with him to Rome. He is on the run, remember? She says No.
They will spend the movie spending time together, as well as some time apart, sometimes doing nothing. There is a long scene in the middle of the movie where she comes home to find him in her bed, and they sit around and talk for quite awhile.
They are young. They are trying to decide what they want in life.
Michel Poiccard will go under the name Laszlo Kovacs.
It just so happens that Laszlo Kovacs is also the name of a Hungarian-turned-American cinematographer. Just as Jean-Luc Godard was a founder of the French New Wave, so also was Laszlo Kovacs a founder of the American New Wave.
The latter Laszlo shot Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), What's Up, Doc? (1972), Paper Moon (1973), Shampoo (1975), New York, New York (1977), Ghostbusters (1984), Mask (1985), Say Anything (1989), and My Best Friend's Wedding (1997).
However, Godard did not name Belmondo's alias after the cinematographer. The cinematographer had not yet started working, nor had Godard met him. Rather, Godard named Belmondo's alias after another character he had played the previous year in a colleague's film.
Jean-Paul Belmondo played Laszlo Kovacs in Claude Chabrol's 1959 film Leda (aka A Double Tour), the film Chabrol made right after making the two we have seen, Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins (1959).
The police are on to them.
The police are closing in.
Where will this end?
But what is on their minds is not the police. Not, "Will we get caught?" But, "How do I feel about him?" "How do I feel about her?" "What do I want to do with my life?" "Do I like this musical composer?" "Do I look like Bogart?"
Watch and decide for yourself.
Does he look like Bogart?
Or does he have his own identity?
One that others have wanted to mimic ever since.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
109 - Paris Belongs to Us, 1961, France. Dir. Jacques Rivette.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
109 - Paris Belongs to Us, 1961, France. Dir. Jacques Rivette.
Anne and Gerard sit on the bridge. The Pont des Arts. The Art Bridge.
The famous pedestrian bridge that crosses the river Seine.
In a Paris that is magically empty.
Gerard is directing a Shakespeare play. Pericles.
He has cast Anne in a role.
Anne is not an actress. She is a literature student. She has an exam coming up.
But she showed up to rehearsal with her friend Jean-Marc when he went to quit the play.
She asked if she could stay and watch. Gerard said yes.
Then a woman quit the play, so Gerard asked if she could read with the others.
Then he asked her to play the part.
Now they are sitting on the bridge.
Gerard asks Anne what she thinks of Pericles.
She says it is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
Yet that is OK. Shakespeare had great insights. Great moments. And if the audience is patient, then they will appreciate what he is giving them.
Jacques Rivette, the writer-director of our film, is talking about himself. He is talking about the film we are watching. Paris Belongs to Us.
It is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
And he hopes we will be patient with him the way we might be patient with Shakespeare.
Instead of jumping off the Pont des Arts, which some might want to do when watching this film.
Paris Belongs to Us is the first film in the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague).
Well, at least it was supposed to be.
It was the first feature film begun by one of the members of the Cahiers du Cinema writing team.
It just was not the first feature film finished.
It took four long years to make.
And by the time Jacques Rivette finished it, his colleagues had all come out with their films. And some of them had become stars. And some of them were making good money.
And the style of their films had by now defined what the French New Wave would be. Making this film already feel somewhat outdated.
It is actually kind of us to say this film is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
The truth is it is an amateur film.
Made by a beginner. By someone with no training. And little experience beyond a few short films. And with little money.
Rivette did not have a script but rather a breakdown of scenes. He had no storyboards. He shot silently (MOS) and added voices and sound later. He borrowed a camera.
He used his friends as actors. They improvised. The Script Girl wrote down their lines as they spoke them and then they went back and rewrote the dialogue. When they overdubbed the voices later, the new lines did not always match the lips.
The camerawork is casual. Rivette seems to have placed the camera just wherever he felt like it in the moment rather than with a precise purpose.
The lighting is harsh. He had few if any film lights. He used natural lighting and practical lighting. People walk in and out of the light and shadows at random. A character may be in the sunlight and then step into the shadow of the trees and go into silhouette for no reason .
The camera is sometimes overexposed and sometimes underexposed.
The sound effects added later sound artificial. They may be indoors rehearsing and you hear thunder but it does not sound as though it is really happening outside. It sounds more like a Mystic Moods record.
The acting is theatrical and stagey. Some characters are stiff. Others are emoting. At times you feel you are watching a high school play.
And if we have not discouraged you yet, let us add this bit and piece:
The story feels as though it were written by an undergrad newly enamored with existentialism.
We go to a party. People are sitting around. No one seems to be having a great time. But that is OK. That is not the goal of this crowd. They are more interested in being.
One of their members has died. Juan. The composer. The one who wrote the music for our staging of the play Pericles.
He may have committed suicide. Or he may have been eliminated by a secret conspiracy.
Really.
Because we lounge-abouts are nihilists. Anarchists. Political revolutionaries. And someone somewhere somehow might be threatened by our subversive activities.
Maybe.
Do they grieve the death of their compatriot? No. They philosophize. They take drags. They attempt to affect the profound.
Anne walks through the room. She is new. She stumbled upon this scene through the instigating of her brother Pierre.
She meets a man named Philip Kaufman. Whose name has nothing to do with our American director. Maybe more like Philip Yordan. The character Kaufman is an American journalist banished to France by the black list.
And a woman named Terry. Whose last name is Yordan. Who is mysterious. And whom Kaufman accuses of being responsible for Juan's death, at least morally
Anne will go on a quest.
A quest to find out how Juan died. Did he commit suicide or was he killed?
And a quest to find out if Gerard is going to commit suicide or be killed.
Because she keeps receiving these notes from Gerard. Suggesting that he might be next. If he actually wrote them.
There are moments when Gerard and Anne start hitting it off. Maybe they will like each other. Maybe some chemistry will develop.
But that would be asking too much of this film.
What we get instead is this great line:
"Well, good luck. Work hard and marry a notary."
Gerard say it to Anne as they depart.
But she comes back to him with another note. He is standing on the curb with another woman. Also with no chemistry.
He rips up the note and throws the bits and pieces onto the sidewalk. Claiming he did not write it.
Then she finds out that he does die.
Really.
He committed suicide. Unless Terry killed him.
We have time for one more stagey conversation between the two women. With the magazine Cahiers du Cinema prominently displayed on a rack above their heads. Do you get it? Do you get it? Jacques Rivette wants you to get it.
Anne asks what is going on.
Terry asserts the conspiracy.
"It affects him, Juan, you, all of us."
She stands dramatically and turns slowly. She looks out and delivers her lines for the parents of this high school play we are watching.
"Those who don't give in are broken. Either we huddle together like flotsam, or swallow something like this. Total oblivion in 10 minutes. / We're imbeciles. / It's all your fault. You sought the sublime."
Really?
Really.
Then we go out to the countryside and Anne has a premonition that Terry killed Gerard. When the real Terry appears Anne confronts her.
This is the kind of film people watch because of its place in history and not for its ability to stand on its own two feet.
It is not unlike so many student films being made today or independent films submitted to festivals.
If it were to come out today it would be laughable. Or at least it would be a serviceable first step in the beginning of the career of a burgeoning director.
However, the Criterion disc includes an introduction by University of Georgia professor Richard Neupert which is so compelling it makes you want to give the film another try.
And to be patient with Rivette the way you would be with Shakespeare.
And try to put together the bits and pieces.
Rather than jumping off the bridge. The Art Bridge. The Pont des Artes.
Maybe some companies should hire Dr. Neupert to sell their widgets.
109 - Paris Belongs to Us, 1961, France. Dir. Jacques Rivette.
Anne and Gerard sit on the bridge. The Pont des Arts. The Art Bridge.
The famous pedestrian bridge that crosses the river Seine.
In a Paris that is magically empty.
Gerard is directing a Shakespeare play. Pericles.
He has cast Anne in a role.
Anne is not an actress. She is a literature student. She has an exam coming up.
But she showed up to rehearsal with her friend Jean-Marc when he went to quit the play.
She asked if she could stay and watch. Gerard said yes.
Then a woman quit the play, so Gerard asked if she could read with the others.
Then he asked her to play the part.
Now they are sitting on the bridge.
Gerard asks Anne what she thinks of Pericles.
She says it is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
Yet that is OK. Shakespeare had great insights. Great moments. And if the audience is patient, then they will appreciate what he is giving them.
Jacques Rivette, the writer-director of our film, is talking about himself. He is talking about the film we are watching. Paris Belongs to Us.
It is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
And he hopes we will be patient with him the way we might be patient with Shakespeare.
Instead of jumping off the Pont des Arts, which some might want to do when watching this film.
Paris Belongs to Us is the first film in the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague).
Well, at least it was supposed to be.
It was the first feature film begun by one of the members of the Cahiers du Cinema writing team.
It just was not the first feature film finished.
It took four long years to make.
And by the time Jacques Rivette finished it, his colleagues had all come out with their films. And some of them had become stars. And some of them were making good money.
And the style of their films had by now defined what the French New Wave would be. Making this film already feel somewhat outdated.
It is actually kind of us to say this film is disjointed. Uneven. Put together in bits and pieces.
The truth is it is an amateur film.
Made by a beginner. By someone with no training. And little experience beyond a few short films. And with little money.
Rivette did not have a script but rather a breakdown of scenes. He had no storyboards. He shot silently (MOS) and added voices and sound later. He borrowed a camera.
He used his friends as actors. They improvised. The Script Girl wrote down their lines as they spoke them and then they went back and rewrote the dialogue. When they overdubbed the voices later, the new lines did not always match the lips.
The camerawork is casual. Rivette seems to have placed the camera just wherever he felt like it in the moment rather than with a precise purpose.
The lighting is harsh. He had few if any film lights. He used natural lighting and practical lighting. People walk in and out of the light and shadows at random. A character may be in the sunlight and then step into the shadow of the trees and go into silhouette for no reason .
The camera is sometimes overexposed and sometimes underexposed.
The sound effects added later sound artificial. They may be indoors rehearsing and you hear thunder but it does not sound as though it is really happening outside. It sounds more like a Mystic Moods record.
The acting is theatrical and stagey. Some characters are stiff. Others are emoting. At times you feel you are watching a high school play.
And if we have not discouraged you yet, let us add this bit and piece:
The story feels as though it were written by an undergrad newly enamored with existentialism.
We go to a party. People are sitting around. No one seems to be having a great time. But that is OK. That is not the goal of this crowd. They are more interested in being.
One of their members has died. Juan. The composer. The one who wrote the music for our staging of the play Pericles.
He may have committed suicide. Or he may have been eliminated by a secret conspiracy.
Really.
Because we lounge-abouts are nihilists. Anarchists. Political revolutionaries. And someone somewhere somehow might be threatened by our subversive activities.
Maybe.
Do they grieve the death of their compatriot? No. They philosophize. They take drags. They attempt to affect the profound.
Anne walks through the room. She is new. She stumbled upon this scene through the instigating of her brother Pierre.
She meets a man named Philip Kaufman. Whose name has nothing to do with our American director. Maybe more like Philip Yordan. The character Kaufman is an American journalist banished to France by the black list.
And a woman named Terry. Whose last name is Yordan. Who is mysterious. And whom Kaufman accuses of being responsible for Juan's death, at least morally
Anne will go on a quest.
A quest to find out how Juan died. Did he commit suicide or was he killed?
And a quest to find out if Gerard is going to commit suicide or be killed.
Because she keeps receiving these notes from Gerard. Suggesting that he might be next. If he actually wrote them.
There are moments when Gerard and Anne start hitting it off. Maybe they will like each other. Maybe some chemistry will develop.
But that would be asking too much of this film.
What we get instead is this great line:
"Well, good luck. Work hard and marry a notary."
Gerard say it to Anne as they depart.
But she comes back to him with another note. He is standing on the curb with another woman. Also with no chemistry.
He rips up the note and throws the bits and pieces onto the sidewalk. Claiming he did not write it.
Then she finds out that he does die.
Really.
He committed suicide. Unless Terry killed him.
We have time for one more stagey conversation between the two women. With the magazine Cahiers du Cinema prominently displayed on a rack above their heads. Do you get it? Do you get it? Jacques Rivette wants you to get it.
Anne asks what is going on.
Terry asserts the conspiracy.
"It affects him, Juan, you, all of us."
She stands dramatically and turns slowly. She looks out and delivers her lines for the parents of this high school play we are watching.
"Those who don't give in are broken. Either we huddle together like flotsam, or swallow something like this. Total oblivion in 10 minutes. / We're imbeciles. / It's all your fault. You sought the sublime."
Really?
Really.
Then we go out to the countryside and Anne has a premonition that Terry killed Gerard. When the real Terry appears Anne confronts her.
This is the kind of film people watch because of its place in history and not for its ability to stand on its own two feet.
It is not unlike so many student films being made today or independent films submitted to festivals.
If it were to come out today it would be laughable. Or at least it would be a serviceable first step in the beginning of the career of a burgeoning director.
However, the Criterion disc includes an introduction by University of Georgia professor Richard Neupert which is so compelling it makes you want to give the film another try.
And to be patient with Rivette the way you would be with Shakespeare.
And try to put together the bits and pieces.
Rather than jumping off the bridge. The Art Bridge. The Pont des Artes.
Maybe some companies should hire Dr. Neupert to sell their widgets.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
108 - Purple Noon (The Talented Mr. Ripley), 1960, France/Italy. Dir. Rene Clement.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
108 - Purple Noon (The Talented Mr. Ripley), 1960, France/Italy. Dir. Rene Clement.
Tom Ripley loves life.
At least when that life is provided for him by his rich friend Philippe Greenleaf.
It is apparent that without that life, Tom would not want to live.
No, this is the life for him. The only life. The one in which he may wear Philippe's clothes, spend Philippe's money, and have Philippe's girl.
The one in which he will be Philippe.
Until he can be Tom again. With all that Philippe ever had.
Tom is charming. Tom is clever. Tom is determined.
If you are rich and have a beautiful girlfriend, you might want to stay away from Tom.
Tom is not good for your health.
Or your life.
Because he wants yours. And he tends to get what he wants.
Purple Noon was filmed in beautiful Naples, Italy, with parts of it filmed in Rome.
It was filmed in beautiful Eastmancolor by master cinematographer Henri Decae
We have seen plenty of Decae's work--The Silence of the Sea (1949), Les Enfants Terribles (1950), Bob le Flambeur (1956), Le Beau Serge (1958), Les Cousins (1949), Leon Morin, Priest (1961), Le Samourai (1967), Le Cercle Rouge (1970)--and we will see more.
Most of the films listed above were shot in black and white, with the last two listed filmed in color.
We have now seen three films close together that were shot in Eastmancolor and which take place in cities or villages on the sea--. . . And God Created Woman (1956), Black Orpheus (1959), and now Purple Noon (1960).
The colors of these films are rich and vibrant and beautiful.
They make you want to watch the movies.
They make you want to go to the movies.
It is worth taking the time to discover these films and the color palette they used.
Many people know about Technicolor, but how many know about Eastmancolor?
And how brilliantly it was used in the 1950s.
Technicolor required three strips. Eastmancolor was the breakthrough technology that used one strip, with multiple layers. It was first used in 1950.
And the films that used it are more brilliantly colorful than much of what you see at the movies today.
Today the biggest films are still filmed on film.
But more and more movies are going digital.
And young independent filmmakers celebrate cameras with higher resolutions and the ability to shoot what they call raw.
But do they celebrate color?
Raw.
Where you can change every pixel however you want to in a program.
Where the cinematographer no longer makes the decisions in the camera.
But the editor now makes the decisions on a computer.
And who has the better eye?
When was the last time you went to the movies today and left exclaiming, "What beautiful color that film had! I want to watch it again so that I can see those rich, vibrant colors."
Or did you find yourself saying, "That movie sure did have a dark tone. Was it sepia? Was it earth tones? Or was it just dark? A lot of details got lost in the darkness."
Watch these three movies back-to-back--. . . And God Created Woman (1956), Black Orpheus (1959), and Purple Noon (1960)--and see what Eastmancolor film can do.
For a city by the sea.
* * * * *
Here is the charming and handsome Alain Delon. We have now seen him in two masterful French films by Jean-Pierre Melville--Le Samorai (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) (1970).
We are going to see him in at least one Italian film, Visconti's The Leopard (1963).
Today we get to see him in a French film set in Italy, the original Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon.
108 - Purple Noon (The Talented Mr. Ripley), 1960, France/Italy. Dir. Rene Clement.
Tom Ripley loves life.
At least when that life is provided for him by his rich friend Philippe Greenleaf.
It is apparent that without that life, Tom would not want to live.
No, this is the life for him. The only life. The one in which he may wear Philippe's clothes, spend Philippe's money, and have Philippe's girl.
The one in which he will be Philippe.
Until he can be Tom again. With all that Philippe ever had.
Tom is charming. Tom is clever. Tom is determined.
If you are rich and have a beautiful girlfriend, you might want to stay away from Tom.
Tom is not good for your health.
Or your life.
Because he wants yours. And he tends to get what he wants.
Purple Noon was filmed in beautiful Naples, Italy, with parts of it filmed in Rome.
It was filmed in beautiful Eastmancolor by master cinematographer Henri Decae
We have seen plenty of Decae's work--The Silence of the Sea (1949), Les Enfants Terribles (1950), Bob le Flambeur (1956), Le Beau Serge (1958), Les Cousins (1949), Leon Morin, Priest (1961), Le Samourai (1967), Le Cercle Rouge (1970)--and we will see more.
Most of the films listed above were shot in black and white, with the last two listed filmed in color.
We have now seen three films close together that were shot in Eastmancolor and which take place in cities or villages on the sea--. . . And God Created Woman (1956), Black Orpheus (1959), and now Purple Noon (1960).
The colors of these films are rich and vibrant and beautiful.
They make you want to watch the movies.
They make you want to go to the movies.
It is worth taking the time to discover these films and the color palette they used.
Many people know about Technicolor, but how many know about Eastmancolor?
And how brilliantly it was used in the 1950s.
Technicolor required three strips. Eastmancolor was the breakthrough technology that used one strip, with multiple layers. It was first used in 1950.
And the films that used it are more brilliantly colorful than much of what you see at the movies today.
Today the biggest films are still filmed on film.
But more and more movies are going digital.
And young independent filmmakers celebrate cameras with higher resolutions and the ability to shoot what they call raw.
But do they celebrate color?
Raw.
Where you can change every pixel however you want to in a program.
Where the cinematographer no longer makes the decisions in the camera.
But the editor now makes the decisions on a computer.
And who has the better eye?
When was the last time you went to the movies today and left exclaiming, "What beautiful color that film had! I want to watch it again so that I can see those rich, vibrant colors."
Or did you find yourself saying, "That movie sure did have a dark tone. Was it sepia? Was it earth tones? Or was it just dark? A lot of details got lost in the darkness."
Watch these three movies back-to-back--. . . And God Created Woman (1956), Black Orpheus (1959), and Purple Noon (1960)--and see what Eastmancolor film can do.
For a city by the sea.
* * * * *
Here is the charming and handsome Alain Delon. We have now seen him in two masterful French films by Jean-Pierre Melville--Le Samorai (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle) (1970).
We are going to see him in at least one Italian film, Visconti's The Leopard (1963).
Today we get to see him in a French film set in Italy, the original Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon.
Monday, April 17, 2017
107 - Judex, 1963, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
Monday, April 17, 2017
107 - Judex, 1963, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
What if Zorro teamed up with Sherlock Holmes to battle an evil Catwoman, dressed as The Flying Nun.
Beginning at a masquerade where a bird-headed magician makes doves appear from nowhere.
And ending with a rooftop catfight with a circus acrobat.
Welcome to Judex.
Is it a film or a comic book mashup?
Favraux is a banker who will celebrate his bank. The bank is now 20 years old. Time for a masquerade. A masked ball.
His daughter Jacqueline is getting married. To Viscount Amaury de la Rochefontaine.
Say that name three times fast.
Favraux will celebrate both occasions at the ball.
If only he were not getting those pesky letters from some Robin-Hood-like gadfly.
Accusing him of some sort of skullduggery.
Claiming he has hurt people. And threatening to hurt him in return.
It is a good thing he has his trusty servant, his valet Vallieres, standing by his side.
Favraux hires a private detective. The detective, Cocantin, seems a little more interested in telling stories to Favraux's granddaughter than to doing his job.
So it is not surprising when at the ball, after the bird-headed magician makes magic with silks and doves, Cocantin is nowhere to be found when Favraux falls down dead.
What!
With her father gone, Jacqueline renounces her wealth.
She now believes that he obtained his wealth through chicanery.
Marie Verdier eavesdrops and learns that early in his career he had acquired scandalous documents which he used to blackmail others to gain the money to launch his bank.
Marie has turned down Favraux's hand in marriage. Now that he is dead she will break into his chateau in search of the secret documents, which she believes will now make her rich.
Why marry into money when you can steal it?
Jacqueline is played by Edith Scob, who also played Christiane in yesterday's Eyes Without a Face (1960). She spends that movie with her face covered by a mask. She spends this movie with her face covered by her porcelain innocence.
But just as Marie breaks into the chateau to steal the documents, so also a group of caped, masked men break into the chateau to steal Favraux's body.
They will deposit it in a secret lair like the Bat Cave, complete with old-fashioned-futuristic technology.
And now let the adventures begin.
What if Valierres is not who he claims to be.
What if Marie Verdier is really Diana Monti.
What if Favraux is alive.
What if a kid gets involved and helps crack the case.
What if Cocantin teams up with Judex.
What if his circus acrobat friend Daisy shows up to help.
Judex will play the avenger but Diana will look like an Avenger.
Judex will do his deeds of derring-do
Are we watching James Bond or The Count of Monte Cristo?
Whatever it is, it is entertaining.
Narrative logic and nuanced acting may not be prerequisites but surreal set pieces are.
This is B-movie pulp on an A-movie budget.
Time for some popcorn.
107 - Judex, 1963, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
What if Zorro teamed up with Sherlock Holmes to battle an evil Catwoman, dressed as The Flying Nun.
Beginning at a masquerade where a bird-headed magician makes doves appear from nowhere.
And ending with a rooftop catfight with a circus acrobat.
Welcome to Judex.
Is it a film or a comic book mashup?
Favraux is a banker who will celebrate his bank. The bank is now 20 years old. Time for a masquerade. A masked ball.
His daughter Jacqueline is getting married. To Viscount Amaury de la Rochefontaine.
Say that name three times fast.
Favraux will celebrate both occasions at the ball.
If only he were not getting those pesky letters from some Robin-Hood-like gadfly.
Accusing him of some sort of skullduggery.
Claiming he has hurt people. And threatening to hurt him in return.
It is a good thing he has his trusty servant, his valet Vallieres, standing by his side.
Favraux hires a private detective. The detective, Cocantin, seems a little more interested in telling stories to Favraux's granddaughter than to doing his job.
So it is not surprising when at the ball, after the bird-headed magician makes magic with silks and doves, Cocantin is nowhere to be found when Favraux falls down dead.
What!
With her father gone, Jacqueline renounces her wealth.
She now believes that he obtained his wealth through chicanery.
Marie Verdier eavesdrops and learns that early in his career he had acquired scandalous documents which he used to blackmail others to gain the money to launch his bank.
Marie has turned down Favraux's hand in marriage. Now that he is dead she will break into his chateau in search of the secret documents, which she believes will now make her rich.
Why marry into money when you can steal it?
Jacqueline is played by Edith Scob, who also played Christiane in yesterday's Eyes Without a Face (1960). She spends that movie with her face covered by a mask. She spends this movie with her face covered by her porcelain innocence.
But just as Marie breaks into the chateau to steal the documents, so also a group of caped, masked men break into the chateau to steal Favraux's body.
They will deposit it in a secret lair like the Bat Cave, complete with old-fashioned-futuristic technology.
And now let the adventures begin.
What if Valierres is not who he claims to be.
What if Marie Verdier is really Diana Monti.
What if Favraux is alive.
What if a kid gets involved and helps crack the case.
What if Cocantin teams up with Judex.
What if his circus acrobat friend Daisy shows up to help.
Judex will play the avenger but Diana will look like an Avenger.
Judex will do his deeds of derring-do
Are we watching James Bond or The Count of Monte Cristo?
Whatever it is, it is entertaining.
Narrative logic and nuanced acting may not be prerequisites but surreal set pieces are.
This is B-movie pulp on an A-movie budget.
Time for some popcorn.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
106 - Eyes Without a Face, 1960, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
106 - Eyes Without a Face, 1960, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
A woman drives mysteriously down the road at night.
She is Valli. Alida Valli.
Who was Mrs. Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). Anna Schmidt in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). That was the movie with the zither and Orson Welles' improvised speech about the cuckoo clock. The countess in Visconti's Senso (1954), which we will see. Florentine opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's Italian outdoor noir The Night Heaven Fell (1958).
And now Louise.
What is she up to?
Why is she driving mysteriously?
What is that pearl choker doing wrapped around her neck? This time of night?
She looks in the rearview mirror.
A . . . person? . . . slinks in the back seat. Draped in a trench coat. Covered by a fedora.
A truck passes.
Louise tenses. She does not want to be caught. By this trucker. By anyone.
The truck moves on.
Louise stops in an isolated spot. By the river.
What dark secrets lurk beneath the surface?
Louise will add one. A dark secret.
She will dispose of this blanketed thing. A body. A corpse. A woman in man's clothing.
The police will find the body.
And call in Dr. Génessier to identify it. He identifies it. He claims it is his daughter.
He is a highly respected scientist. A great mind. A pioneer.
Young men look up to him.
Mature men learn from him.
Elderly women swoon over him.
He gives public lectures.
In an age when the advances of science were praised as public spectacle.
He is, after all, a leading figure in the art--ahem, the science--of homografty.
What?
You know. Homografty.
Homografty is the transferring of tissue from one creature to another of the same species.
Some movie reviews use the term heterograft, but that is the transferring of tissue from a creature of one species to a creature of a different species. As in placing a baboon heart in a human.
This is human to human. The same species.
As in "skin graft."
Dr. Génessier is transferring the skin from one woman's face to that of another.
This now happens in our day.
But in 1960 it was still beyond their grasp. So why not put it within the grasp of a mad scientist.
Dr. Génessier loves his daughter Christiane. He wants to heal her. To give her a new face.
Her old one was destroyed in a car wreck in which he was behind the wheel.
He feels responsible.
She wears a mask. She hates her mask. She hates her life. She is kept secluded in his big mansion. Isolated. Alone. Waiting for a successful transplant.
This woman that Louise has just dumped into the river was the last donor.
How generous!
The transplant didn't take. The new face was rejected. They need to find a new donor.
Louise is loyal.
After all, Dr. Génessier succeeded in performing a miracle on her. She has a beautiful face. She only has to hide the scar behind that pearl choker.
She will find a suitable donor for Christiane.
Whether the donor is willing or not.
For some reason people are not so eager to give their faces away. They require a little . . . coercion.
They try a girl named Edna. Louise brings her to the mansion. Gets her past the German shepherds.
Edna donates.
Edna tries to escape, her face completely wrapped, like a mummy head. She falls out an upper window. She does not escape.
Christiane's body rejects Edna's face. Her condition is worsening.
They try a girl named Paulette.
They do not know Paulette is a plant. The police are now on to him. They have sent her in.
Christiane is now disillusioned with her father and frees Paulette, attacks Louise, frees the dogs (and the doves).
Dr. Génessier explains everything to the police. His version, anyway. He is so smooth that they believe him.
But then there are those dogs. Angry. Hungry. Now freed.
Christiane will walk into the woods.
Her father will not follow.
Eyes Without a Face was written by the men who wrote Les Diaboliques (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, which we saw, and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), which we discussed then.
It was filmed by Eugen Schufftan, who developed the Schufftan Process, used famously in 1927 by Fritz Lang in Metropolis and by Abel Gance in Napoleon. He also worked on our first film, People On Sunday (1930) (001, January 1). After Eyes Without a Face he would shoot The Hustler and win an Oscar.
The Schufftan Process is doing with glass what we do now with green screen. You carve out a plate of glass where part of it is transparent and part of it is mirror. You set the glass at a 45-degree angle to the camera lens. The camera sees through the transparent part to the landscape in front of it, and it sees the reflection of the mirror part to the person or object reflected. It superimposes the mirrored subject onto the seen landscape.
If you have the Billy Idol 1984 hit song playing in your head while reading this, and wondering if there is a connection, the answer is Yes. Billy Idol's song is a reference to this movie.
Sing on.
106 - Eyes Without a Face, 1960, France. Dir. Georges Franju.
A woman drives mysteriously down the road at night.
She is Valli. Alida Valli.
Who was Mrs. Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). Anna Schmidt in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). That was the movie with the zither and Orson Welles' improvised speech about the cuckoo clock. The countess in Visconti's Senso (1954), which we will see. Florentine opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's Italian outdoor noir The Night Heaven Fell (1958).
And now Louise.
What is she up to?
Why is she driving mysteriously?
What is that pearl choker doing wrapped around her neck? This time of night?
She looks in the rearview mirror.
A . . . person? . . . slinks in the back seat. Draped in a trench coat. Covered by a fedora.
A truck passes.
Louise tenses. She does not want to be caught. By this trucker. By anyone.
The truck moves on.
Louise stops in an isolated spot. By the river.
What dark secrets lurk beneath the surface?
Louise will add one. A dark secret.
She will dispose of this blanketed thing. A body. A corpse. A woman in man's clothing.
The police will find the body.
And call in Dr. Génessier to identify it. He identifies it. He claims it is his daughter.
He is a highly respected scientist. A great mind. A pioneer.
Young men look up to him.
Mature men learn from him.
Elderly women swoon over him.
He gives public lectures.
In an age when the advances of science were praised as public spectacle.
He is, after all, a leading figure in the art--ahem, the science--of homografty.
What?
You know. Homografty.
Homografty is the transferring of tissue from one creature to another of the same species.
Some movie reviews use the term heterograft, but that is the transferring of tissue from a creature of one species to a creature of a different species. As in placing a baboon heart in a human.
This is human to human. The same species.
As in "skin graft."
Dr. Génessier is transferring the skin from one woman's face to that of another.
This now happens in our day.
But in 1960 it was still beyond their grasp. So why not put it within the grasp of a mad scientist.
Dr. Génessier loves his daughter Christiane. He wants to heal her. To give her a new face.
Her old one was destroyed in a car wreck in which he was behind the wheel.
He feels responsible.
She wears a mask. She hates her mask. She hates her life. She is kept secluded in his big mansion. Isolated. Alone. Waiting for a successful transplant.
This woman that Louise has just dumped into the river was the last donor.
How generous!
The transplant didn't take. The new face was rejected. They need to find a new donor.
Louise is loyal.
After all, Dr. Génessier succeeded in performing a miracle on her. She has a beautiful face. She only has to hide the scar behind that pearl choker.
She will find a suitable donor for Christiane.
Whether the donor is willing or not.
For some reason people are not so eager to give their faces away. They require a little . . . coercion.
They try a girl named Edna. Louise brings her to the mansion. Gets her past the German shepherds.
Edna donates.
Edna tries to escape, her face completely wrapped, like a mummy head. She falls out an upper window. She does not escape.
Christiane's body rejects Edna's face. Her condition is worsening.
They try a girl named Paulette.
They do not know Paulette is a plant. The police are now on to him. They have sent her in.
Christiane is now disillusioned with her father and frees Paulette, attacks Louise, frees the dogs (and the doves).
Dr. Génessier explains everything to the police. His version, anyway. He is so smooth that they believe him.
But then there are those dogs. Angry. Hungry. Now freed.
Christiane will walk into the woods.
Her father will not follow.
Eyes Without a Face was written by the men who wrote Les Diaboliques (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, which we saw, and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), which we discussed then.
It was filmed by Eugen Schufftan, who developed the Schufftan Process, used famously in 1927 by Fritz Lang in Metropolis and by Abel Gance in Napoleon. He also worked on our first film, People On Sunday (1930) (001, January 1). After Eyes Without a Face he would shoot The Hustler and win an Oscar.
The Schufftan Process is doing with glass what we do now with green screen. You carve out a plate of glass where part of it is transparent and part of it is mirror. You set the glass at a 45-degree angle to the camera lens. The camera sees through the transparent part to the landscape in front of it, and it sees the reflection of the mirror part to the person or object reflected. It superimposes the mirrored subject onto the seen landscape.
If you have the Billy Idol 1984 hit song playing in your head while reading this, and wondering if there is a connection, the answer is Yes. Billy Idol's song is a reference to this movie.
Sing on.
Friday, April 14, 2017
105 - Black Orpheus, 1959, France, Italy, Brazil. Dir. Marcel Camus.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
105 - Black Orpheus, 1959, France, Italy, Brazil. Dir. Marcel Camus.
Something exploded at the color factory.
Blame it on Rio.
Rio de Janeiro, that is.
It is Carnaval.
Time for color. Lots of rich, lush, beautiful colors.
Filmed in Eastmancolor.
Time for music and singing and dancing and revelry.
Composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim.
The boy who loved the girl from Ipanema.
Who wrote this music before he wrote that music.
Who was responsible for making at least two styles of music international sensations.
Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
And the Samba.
And a soundtrack that will not stop.
Or just stop all the blaming and shut up and dance.
Because when you watch this film, that is exactly what you will find yourself doing.
On a high hill overlooking the deep blue sea.
In a landscape so picturesque you almost expect Icarus himself to crash this story just to fall into that beautiful sea in the background.
But this is not his story.
It is someone else's tragedy.
Tomorrow.
Today, it is time for celebration.
Eurydice is coming.
She is trying to get away.
Trying to escape a man. Someone seems to be after her. Seems to want to kill her. Why?
Maybe she can visit her cousin. Serafina.
Maybe she can hide with her.
And be safe.
She takes the streetcar.
A streetcar with no name.
And meets Orpheus. The conductor. As they go to the end of the line.
He goes by Orfeu.
In beautiful Brazilian Portugese.
He tells her how to get to Serafina's street.
She goes.
He goes to Mira. His fiancée. His fiancée because she told him so. She tells him a lot of sos.
Orfeu is beloved in these parts. Today is the day before Carnaval. Everyone is putting together his or her costume. And mask. And preparing to celebrate.
Orfeu has got some money cause he just got paid.
But this is not just another Saturday night. This is Carnaval!
He wants to get his guitar out of hock.
He needs it to play and sing.
All the children know that when he plays, the sun comes up.
Orfeu and Mira go to the licensing office to get their wedding license. Get it because she told him so.
Now she wants an engagement ring. He needs to buy her one. Buy one because she told him so.
Who cares about your guitar?
She decides to buy the ring herself. And make him pay her back. He will owe her.
Do you see where this relationship is headed?
Orfeu has lady friends. They are platonic. But they love him the way lady friends love the local golden boy.
He is important to their community. He is beloved.
One of his lady friends runs interference with Mira to allow him time to escape to practice his guitar for Carnaval.
The boys sit and watch. Benedito and Zeca. They look up to him. They want to be like him.
When he plays, the sun comes up.
It is not too much of a stretch to guess that Orfeu will end up with Eurydice.
And that the man who wanted to kill her--let's call him Death--will succeed.
And that Orfeu will try to bring her back.
And almost will.
But will look back.
And lose her.
And will lose himself.
After all, this is Orpheus and Eurydice we are talking about.
But what a retelling.
The energy. The dancing. The giving over of one's self to life. LIFE! The joy of living. The joy of being alive.
Someone start some Samba.
Somebody play some Boss Nova.
I think I want to dance.
* * * * *
Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
Antonio Carlos Jobim was born in 1927.
In 1932 he was moved to the beachside community of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro. He would celebrate that community in song for the rest of his life.
In 1935 his father died, and his mother would go on to remarry.
His new stepfather bought him a piano and encouraged him.
Let me say that again.
His new stepfather bought him a piano and encouraged him.
Let that sink in.
He grew up playing in clubs and arranging music.
In 1962, at the age of 35, Antonio Carlos Jobim helped to make the Samba an international sensation.
In 1963 he did the same thing with the Bossa Nova.
He played piano while recording his own compositions with jazz saxophone player Stan Getz, guitarist Joao Gilberto, and Gilberto's ~then-wife, singer Astrud Gilberto.
In 1964 they released the album Getz/Gilberto and its international super-hit "The Girl from Ipanema," a song as silky as it is complex.
But before all that, in 1956, he composed the music for the play Orpheus of the Conception, which premiered in Rio de Janeiro
He returned in 1959 to compose a completely different score and different songs for the film Black Orpheus.
The rest is history.
And worth listening to.
105 - Black Orpheus, 1959, France, Italy, Brazil. Dir. Marcel Camus.
Something exploded at the color factory.
Blame it on Rio.
Rio de Janeiro, that is.
It is Carnaval.
Time for color. Lots of rich, lush, beautiful colors.
Filmed in Eastmancolor.
Time for music and singing and dancing and revelry.
Composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim.
The boy who loved the girl from Ipanema.
Who wrote this music before he wrote that music.
Who was responsible for making at least two styles of music international sensations.
Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
And the Samba.
And a soundtrack that will not stop.
Or just stop all the blaming and shut up and dance.
Because when you watch this film, that is exactly what you will find yourself doing.
On a high hill overlooking the deep blue sea.
In a landscape so picturesque you almost expect Icarus himself to crash this story just to fall into that beautiful sea in the background.
But this is not his story.
It is someone else's tragedy.
Tomorrow.
Today, it is time for celebration.
Eurydice is coming.
She is trying to get away.
Trying to escape a man. Someone seems to be after her. Seems to want to kill her. Why?
Maybe she can visit her cousin. Serafina.
Maybe she can hide with her.
And be safe.
She takes the streetcar.
A streetcar with no name.
And meets Orpheus. The conductor. As they go to the end of the line.
He goes by Orfeu.
In beautiful Brazilian Portugese.
He tells her how to get to Serafina's street.
She goes.
He goes to Mira. His fiancée. His fiancée because she told him so. She tells him a lot of sos.
Orfeu is beloved in these parts. Today is the day before Carnaval. Everyone is putting together his or her costume. And mask. And preparing to celebrate.
Orfeu has got some money cause he just got paid.
But this is not just another Saturday night. This is Carnaval!
He wants to get his guitar out of hock.
He needs it to play and sing.
All the children know that when he plays, the sun comes up.
Orfeu and Mira go to the licensing office to get their wedding license. Get it because she told him so.
Now she wants an engagement ring. He needs to buy her one. Buy one because she told him so.
Who cares about your guitar?
She decides to buy the ring herself. And make him pay her back. He will owe her.
Do you see where this relationship is headed?
Orfeu has lady friends. They are platonic. But they love him the way lady friends love the local golden boy.
He is important to their community. He is beloved.
One of his lady friends runs interference with Mira to allow him time to escape to practice his guitar for Carnaval.
The boys sit and watch. Benedito and Zeca. They look up to him. They want to be like him.
When he plays, the sun comes up.
It is not too much of a stretch to guess that Orfeu will end up with Eurydice.
And that the man who wanted to kill her--let's call him Death--will succeed.
And that Orfeu will try to bring her back.
And almost will.
But will look back.
And lose her.
And will lose himself.
After all, this is Orpheus and Eurydice we are talking about.
But what a retelling.
The energy. The dancing. The giving over of one's self to life. LIFE! The joy of living. The joy of being alive.
Someone start some Samba.
Somebody play some Boss Nova.
I think I want to dance.
* * * * *
Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
Antonio Carlos Jobim was born in 1927.
In 1932 he was moved to the beachside community of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro. He would celebrate that community in song for the rest of his life.
In 1935 his father died, and his mother would go on to remarry.
His new stepfather bought him a piano and encouraged him.
Let me say that again.
His new stepfather bought him a piano and encouraged him.
Let that sink in.
He grew up playing in clubs and arranging music.
In 1962, at the age of 35, Antonio Carlos Jobim helped to make the Samba an international sensation.
In 1963 he did the same thing with the Bossa Nova.
He played piano while recording his own compositions with jazz saxophone player Stan Getz, guitarist Joao Gilberto, and Gilberto's ~then-wife, singer Astrud Gilberto.
In 1964 they released the album Getz/Gilberto and its international super-hit "The Girl from Ipanema," a song as silky as it is complex.
But before all that, in 1956, he composed the music for the play Orpheus of the Conception, which premiered in Rio de Janeiro
He returned in 1959 to compose a completely different score and different songs for the film Black Orpheus.
The rest is history.
And worth listening to.
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