I was thinking last night about all the rancor that goes on at this site. At least it’s proof that HE readers aren’t ones to nod off and say “tutto bene.” This led me for some reason to re-read Richard Brody‘s “Auteur Wars” in the 4.7 New Yorker this morning, and the following passage from a December 2007 Die Zeit interview (translated by GreenCine) with Jean Luc Godard:
“Arguing about cinema [is] something that’s stayed with me from the days of the nouvelle vague, even though it no longer exists in this form,” he says early on. “Because the beautiful thing about cinema is that it still always allows us to argue. Fundamentally. You can get far more upset about an opinion about a film than one about a painting or a piece of music.
“For example, when I say to someone, ‘It doesn’t surprise me at all that you like the new film by Robert Redford because I always knew you were daft.’ That sets things off immediately: ‘Who do you think you are! How dare you!’ And if I want to get to know someone, let’s say, for example, you, then I wouldn’t ask for your opinion about Iraq or Yugoslavia or the train strike, but instead ask you to name a film you like.”