Godard Redux

email this story
read comments (11)
post a comment

Jean Luc Godard's "influence is immeasurable, yet his popular reputation stems from only a small fraction of his output," remarks a Sunday (6.25) N.Y. Times piece by Nathan Lee. "From 1960 to 1967 [Godard] became immensely famous for a series of radical entertainments that fused youth-quake insouciance and jazzy improvisation to genre deconstruction and high-culture formalism. They were genre movies with a twist: pseudo gangster films (Breathless), thrillers (Le Petit Soldat), war movies (Les Carabiniers) musicals (A Woman Is a Woman), science fiction (Alphaville). He is the original meta-movie maestro, the first director as D.J. He is also an accomplished film critic, and has always maintained that writing and directing are two sides of the same coin. But when the familiar reference points to Hollywood vanished in the 1970's, as he became more occupied with Marxism and avant-garde video, people stopped paying attention." I remember a story Andrew Sarris told me in the late '70s about the moment he informed Richard Roud and other Manhattan-based Godard acolytes that he had gotten "off the boat." I've been a Godard dilletante all my life -- there for the classic entires (my all-time favorite is Weekend) and spotty on his more recent stuff (In Praise of Love, Our Music). And yet I'm unquestionably into seeing, for the first time, Masculine Feminine at the L.A. Film Festival next Thursday, 6.29.

Where's Dick's Head?<< previous | next >>Weekend b.o.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on June 24, 2006 at 8:32 AM

comment #1

Larry says ...

I think Godard is the emperor's new clothes. I doubt his reputation will survive another generation.

Posted by Larry at June 24, 2006 9:10 AM

comment #2

Anonymous says ...

A truly ridiculous statement, Larry. The truth is actually the opposite. Godard's films are only beginning to be understood. What other filmmaker from the '60s is anywhere near as relevant today as Godard? He was Tarantino before there was a Tarantino and his films are ten times more complex and sophisticated than QT's. There's no doubt that Godard's films have been all-over-the place since Weekend, but that's a very conscious choice. Godard opposed bourgeois, mainstream filmmaking practices from the beginning and that opposition grew into outright disdain, which explains why casual, middle-of-the-road filmgoers can't handle his films. But that's what's so great about Godard. He doesn't care if you hate him. His movies aren't built to be loved. Sure, some of us love them, but Godard won't lose any sleep if we don't.

Posted by Anonymous at June 24, 2006 9:29 AM

comment #3

Jack says ...

I think Masculin/Feminin is Godard's best film.

Posted by Jack at June 24, 2006 9:58 AM

comment #4

Ron Cossey says ...

Truffaut was the conscience of cinema, Godadard its great revolutionary. Where would the state of cinema be today...without the French New Wave?

Ron Cossey

Posted by Ron Cossey at June 24, 2006 11:59 AM

comment #5

Anonymous says ...

I'd agree Godard is in bad shape, in terms of his legacy. While his name routinely appears in 10 best polls, none of his films ever makes the cut. And therein lies his problem: he's better regarded for the energy and POV he brought to the medium at a certain point. Yet none of his films were really built to last -- they're a collage of amusing moments and just plain unwatchable ones. His parts are more memorable than the wholes. He coasts on reputation.

He enjoys the most support in critics circles and in universities -- and I think the former is an offshoot of the latter, as most "intellectualism" is. But yeah, he always struck me as a filmmaker whose work was college-level, and I dont believe he ever made a serious film worthy of legitimate greatness along the likes of say...La Dolce Vita, Barry Lyndon, Wild Strawberries, or The Godfather. Godard made clever sketches. Those films are masterwork murals.

I'd argue the most significant and contemporary filmmaker of the '60s was and is Stanley Kubrick bar none. Interestingly, while Pauline Kael felt comfortable calling Kubrick an amateur for putting his daughter in 2001, I could never understand how Godard putting himself with Brigitte Bardot in M/F wasn't?

Posted by Anonymous at June 24, 2006 1:59 PM

comment #6

Daniel Zelter says ...

Jeff: I hope your print of Masculine Feminine is better than the one I saw at The New Beverly. The subs were white and thus blended into the background.

"What other filmmaker from the '60s is anywhere near as relevant today as Godard? He was Tarantino before there was a Tarantino and his films are ten times more complex and sophisticated than QT's."

From http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1472494,00.html : "He says he admires me, but that's not true," Godard muses, then makes a cryptic remark about the torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards in Iraq. "What is never said about Tarantino is that those prisons we are shown pictures of, where the torture is taking place, are called "reservoir dogs". I think the name is very appropriate."

Posted by Daniel Zelter at June 24, 2006 2:15 PM

comment #7

Daniel Zelter says ...

Oh, and a really old one from IMDB. Legendary director Jean-Luc Godard has hit out at Quentin Tarantino - one of his biggest admirers - for using the title of one of his 1960s films without financially rewarding him. Maverick film-maker Tarantino took the name Band A Parte (Band Of Outsiders) from the New Wave icon's 1964 movie and used it as the name for his production company. But Breathless filmmaker Godard, 74, is less than impressed by the Pulp Fiction director's intended flattery. He says, "Tarantino named his production company after one of my films. He would have done better to give me some money."

Posted by Daniel Zelter at June 24, 2006 2:18 PM

comment #8

Fielding says ...

While Godard is an overrated bore, anyone who bashes Tarantino can't be all bad.

Posted by Fielding at June 24, 2006 9:08 PM

comment #9

Joe Leydon says ...

With all due respect to Jean-Luc Godard, I would argue that, even now, the most influential of all French New Wave filmmakers is, has been, and always will be Francois Truffaut.

Posted by Joe Leydon at June 24, 2006 9:40 PM

comment #10

TheVisitor967 says ...

I agree with Joe Leydon. To me, the greatest filmmaker from the French New Wave was and always will be Truffaut. He was like the Van Gogh of filmmaking: so much heart and soul and emotional intensity in his work. "Starry Night" could easily be compared to "The 400 Blows."

Posted by TheVisitor967 at June 25, 2006 10:27 AM

comment #11