"Not a just image, but just an image...": Deceased Artiste Raoul Coutard

Although his obits emphasized the fact that Raoul Coutard, who died in early November at age 92, pretty much stumbled into being a cinematographer — he thought he was being asked to take on-set stills for the film in question by his old friend Pierre Schoendoerffer — he wound up crafting some of the most beautiful images and kinetic camerawork in the films of the French New Wave and related filmmakers. He is best identified with Funhouse deity Jean-Luc Godard (aka Uncle Jean), who turned 86 last week. The pair collaborated on sixteen absolutely perfect films, all of which feature gorgeous and vibrant imagery.

Coutard was indeed a photo-journalist who had specialized in war photography (he lived for over a decade in Vietnam) before he entered the film world. His greatest claim to fame — and it is indeed a credit to be reckoned with — is that he innovated ways to shoot “on the fly” with JLG on A bout de souffle. His work with Godard is unassailable, as it is a building block of modern cinema.

He worked with other filmmakers as well on what were some of their best and most beautiful-looking films. He ran the gamut from pure verite to stylized fantasy, doing camerawork for both Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s landmark documentary Chronicle of a Summer (1961) and Jacques Demy’s lighter-than-air romance Lola (also ‘61).

Besides Godard, the filmmaker he most frequently collaborated with was Francois Truffaut (Godard’s best friend, and later nemesis). The quartet of films Coutard shot for Truffaut are among his very best. Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Jules and Jim (1962) were trendsetting tragic romances. The Soft Skin (1964) features some of the most beautiful images in all of Truffaut’s filmography, and The Bride Wore Black (1968) is one of the finest-ever adaptations of noir-master Cornell Woolrich’s work.

Coutard had arguments with Truffaut over the last-mentioned film that ensured they never worked together again. Coutard claimed responsibility, saying he was trying to stop smoking during the shooting and that made him impossible to deal with.

Costa-Gavras has been making sharply political films for the last half-century. Two of his finest, and most successful, films were shot by Coutard, Z (1969) and The Confession (1970). The latter was quite controversial, as it showed the authoritarian excesses of the Soviet Union; it was therefore perceived incorrectly by reviewers as a right-wing film by an iconic left-wing filmmaker. The film is a haunting and memorable tale of unjust imprisonment. 

Z is one of the all-time greatest political thrillers, an unforgettable mixture of plot, message, and characterization — made even better by Coutard’s camerawork and the music of Mikis Theodorakis.

Coutard kept working up until 2001. Unsurprisingly, the filmmaker who used his talents best in his later years was a “younger brother” of the French New Wave, namely Philippe Garrel. His The Birth of Love (1993) stars Sixties icons Jean-Pierre Leaud and Lou Castel, and perfectly captures the look and tone of the French New Wave.

Coutard’s first film as a director, Hoa Binh (1970), received good reviews, won the Best First Film prize at Cannes, and was up for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The film offers a Vietnamese boy’s perspective on the Vietnam War. His third and last film as a director, S.A.S. Malko (1983), was unfortunately a tacky-looking action flick that went straight to video in most countries:

The only proper place to end this tribute is, of course, to discuss his sublime collaboration with Godard. Coutard was selected to shoot A bout de souffle (1960) because of his documentary background, and what he devised for Uncle Jean were several clever, innovative ways to “steal” shots on the streets of Paris.

Aside from secreting the camera in a mail cart and shooting in (and from) moving cars, Coutard was, of course, the cameraman in the wheelchair (above) whom Godard pushed along the street to simulate a tracking shot.

From those gritty beginnings Godard and Coutard moved on to make some of the most perfect and sophisticated films of the decade, including Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Two of Three Things I Know About Her… (1967), and Weekend (also ’67). In each case the film was excellent to begin with (as was the case with Masculin-Feminin, the only non-Coutard Godard feature of that era). But Coutard’s visuals, lighting, and work with colors (or stark b&w, as in Alphaville) made the films even more perfect.

My choice for the finest of all would be Pierrot Le Fou (1965), the “lovers on the run” drama-comedy-musical that covers so much territory in its 110 minutes that it seems like a summation and/or primer for those who are curious about Godard’s way of assembling a film, crafting characters, framing his actors, and exploring the themes that he’s still obsessed with today.

Godard’s films with other cinematographers are still marvelous, but there’s something very special about the rapport he had with Coutard. This is proven by the fact that the two best films Godard made in his Eighties “comeback” period were both shot by Coutard. 

Passion (1982) is an exquisitely beautiful film that counterpoints activity in a factory with that in a nearby movie studio. Stars Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli, and Isabelle Huppert all have some great moments, but the most gorgeous sequences are the ones in which we watch the film-within-a-film being shot.

As is usually the case in Godard’s films about artistic creation, the “interior” work is an unlikely prospect in which famous paintings are recreated as live-action tableaux vivants. What results are some stunningly beautiful images.

Godard's last film with Coutard is another masterpiece that serves as a good “portal” to Uncle Jean's work. First Name: Carmen (1983) is Godard's funny and bittersweet take on the Carmen story. In the Eighties Godard crystallized a visual style that found him frequently cutting to landscapes and the sky as punctuation to the actions of his characters. (He had started doing this in the Sixties but it has been used a lot more in his work in the last 35 years).

Coutard's contribution here is incalculable, as these shots are gorgeously composed and lit, adding a sense of inevitability to the doomed love affair that is at the core of the film. There are many moving sequences in the film (and many great comic ones), none more so than this beautiful image of impotence and lost love, set to Tom Waits' “Ruby's Arms.” 

That sequence is only present in a small shard on YT (I'm not sure if that is because of copyright troubles involving the music, or "obscenity" troubles with the glorious nudity of Maruschka Detmers — America can’t deal with the human body…). One of the only clips found is this fragment from early in the film:

M. Coutard's beautiful images will most certainly live on well into the future. Here is his most famous sequence, from Contempt. He is, of course, the man behind the camera:

Birthday trib 2: Godard at 80

As my second birthday honoree, I want to salute once more Funhouse deity Jean-Luc Godard, aka “Uncle Jean” (from his indelibly eccentric character in the perfect First Name: Carmen). He turned 80 years old on December 3rd and, thankfully for us, is still crafting provocative, brilliant, and gorgeously poetic films.

There are entire bookshelves’ worth of Godard studies out there, but nothing compares to just watching the films themselves. The most common entry point is, of course, his groundbreaking first feature A bout de souffle, which turned 50 this year, thus earning him an honorary Oscar that the Oscar folks don’t deem worthy of inclusion in the telecast for more than a few seconds. I would argue that any of the “classic 15” — his fifteen narrative features from 1960-68 — serve as a great introduction to his style, as do the first three “comeback” films of the early Eighties (Sauve qui peut, Passion, and First Name Carmen).

Godard’s recent films have shown he has lost none of his uncanny grasp of the medium, his perceptive view of the ways in which men and women communicate (and quite often fail to communicate), and his ability to beautifully articulate how the cinema entices/deceives the viewer.

What is impressive about Godard’s work from the last 30 years is its blend of conceptual thinking, intelligent dialogue, and absolutely beautiful imagery. The result is, and I’m not using this term as mere hype, filmic poetry. This was illustrated by the fact that when he made his scripts available to the French publisher P.O.L., they were published as books of poetry — no parenthetical notes, no set-ups, no identification of the characters speaking. Since Godard sometimes quotes numerous authors and filmmakers in his dialogue, there is always a list of sources in the back of every book.

It’s extremely rare that a filmmaker’s work can be so essentially cinematic and yet also function as literature. It also works musically, which is why the music label ECM has released CDs of the complete soundtracks to certain of his features and the epic video masterwork Histoire(s) du Cinema. There is a beautiful article contained in the booklet of the Nouvelle Vague CD set that finds a blind writer offering her experience of Godard's dense sound mix in the film.

As a measure of Godard’s cross-cultural fame and his fans' justified devotion, I refer you to these folks, who decided to create a new JLG font to celebrate Godard’s 80th birthday. (Thanks to RC for passing this on.) Here is the lowdown on it.

Now that I’ve made the case that the man is a fucking artistic genius, let us wallow in his most “accessible” moments, those involving music. Basically any of the Godard-cut trailers for any of the “golden 15” films functions like a music-vid. All of these trailers are on YT, so they merely need to be searched out by title. Here is my personal fave of longstanding, from 1966:



His “comeback” film Sauve Qui Peut (la vie) (aka Every Man for Himself, 1980) recently was re-released in America and will hopefully be out on DVD sometime soon. It has some fascinating moments in which Godard uses electronic music:



A unforgettable mixture of image and sound, as Tom Waits’ “Ruby’s Arms” is used to underscore a scene of impotence in Prenom Carmen (1983):



One of my all-time fave bands, the French duo Les Rita Mitsouko, were studied in Soigne Ta Droite (aka, Keep Up Your Right, 1987). I put this up on YT when Les Rita mastermind Fred Chichin died:



One of Godard’s 21st–century triumphs is the film Eloge de l’amour (aka In Praise of Love, 2001). Here, a gorgeous b&w scene is underscored by a song from Vigo’s timeless L’Atalante:



In closing I offer you the union of our two birthday-salute recipients: Woody Allen as directed by Godard in the wildly uneven King Lear (1987):



And the only onscreen meeting of both filmmakers, in the Godard interview video Meetin’ WA (1986), where a very reserved Uncle Jean meets a very reserved Woody. There are no English subs for Godard’s narration here, but you do have the actual interview between the two in English. This is must-see for anyone who likes either filmmaker (or both):

Godard defends an mp3 downloader

“There are no copyrights, only copy-duties.” So said Uncle Jean on the subjects of of intellectual property and copyright law. For those who require further elaboration, I refer you to one of his latter-day masterpieces, the multipart essay/montage film Histoire(s) du cinema, which at one point was up in its entirety with English subs on YouTube, but can still found around the Net, duplicated from the British DVD. One of the episodes in that mind-blowing series contains a legend where the copyright should be that reads “No Copyright [Year] JLG.”

Godard is fully aware of the Internet-download situation and, as I noted here some weeks back, recently tweaked his producers and the public by releasing trailers for his latest, Film Socialisme, that actually were the film itself, sped-up to different lengths. To solidify his belief that there is no such thing as intellectual property, he has now donated a thousand Euros to the defense fund of a Frenchman on trial for downloading 13,788 mp3s. You can read a summary of the story in English here (with good translations in the comments field), or if you read French, here is the original story.

By donating money — and even more importantly, his name — to the defense of James Climent, the downloader in question, Godard is putting his money where his mouth is, and underscoring his belief that copyright is a concept intended to put money in folks’ pockets who never had anything to do with the creation of the works in question (notice his emphasis on the inheritance of money by the families of artists long after they are dead).

In Histoire(s), Godard demonstrated with his usual brilliance that he could borrow images from all eras of cinema and create something entirely new. (The blog entry cites him saying, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”) As a result the series has never been picked up for distribution in the U.S. because all the arthouse distributors, large and small, are paralyzed by the notion of lawsuit by copyright owners. The terms “alternative culture” and “alternative cinema” mean very little in the U.S. when you get right down to it. Here is the beginning of that brilliant work, with English subs:

Does God Really Need an Oscar, numero deux

Two articles appeared this week relating to Uncle Jean getting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oscars. The first confirmed that Godard had indeed received his wacky little we’re bestowing-on-you-our-highest-honor-that-we-refuse-to-broadcast letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His longtime ladyfriend and collaborator (identified as his “wife” by The New York Times — which apparently doesn’t bother to fact-check or proofread much of anything these days [I'm available at reasonable rates, folks!]) Anne-Marie Mieville knowingly stated that “it’s not the Oscars,” referring, of course, to the fact that the Academy has broken off its Lifetime Achievers and put them with the technical-award winners. She also asked, “Would you go all that way for a bit of metal?”

In the second piece, which appeared in various publications online, it was noted that JLG sent a “cordial, handwritten note” to the president of the Academy saying that, “schedule permitting,” he will come to the not-fit-for-prime-time ceremony on November 13th. I’m hoping he fakes them out, does interviews as if he’s coming (as he did when he was getting the Lifetime Achievement from the European Film Awards a few years back), and then just blows the whole thing off. And please, Academy folk, don’t consider Quentin Tarantino to be the central presenter — I’m sure his love of cute Sixties Godard is legitimate, but there’s a lot more to Uncle Jean’s work than the “Madison scene” in Band à Part….

Does "God" really need an Oscar?

Every self-respecting film fan knows that the Oscars are a game that Hollywood plays with the world (and itself). Mainstream multiplex fare is worse than it has ever been in history, even the best films are pathetically derivative and the biggest stars are blander and less talented than ever. But at the Oscarcast each year they tell us about how today’s best films (maybe 10 out of the few hundred they produce every year) are part of a continuum, they are the current-day “descendents,” so to speak, of the masterworks made during Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Silver Ages like the stunning period in the early Seventies when some of the best-ever American films were made with major studio backing.

Each year’s Oscar telecast has less and less time for anything to do with Hollywood’s past, though. The old-movie montages get quicker and shorter, each dead-this-year tribute now lasts maybe 10-20 seconds instead of a minute or two (unless you're John Hughes!), and finally, this past ceremony saw the “erasure” from the official telecast of the Lifetime Achievement winners (Roger Corman, Lauren Bacall, studio exec John Calley, and cinematographer Gordon Willis), which I wrote about here.

So this week the new Lifetime Achievement winners were announced, and they are as worthy of the prize as Corman, Bacall, Calley, and Willis. The announced honorees are the most pre-eminent writer about silent cinema, Kevin Brownlow (right)(the first time a film historian has gotten an Oscar), character actor extraordinaire Eli Wallach, a “Hollywood maverick” generation director who still is trying to make challenging cinema (Francis Ford Coppola), and a legend who is one of the greatest living filmmakers, Uncle Jean, aka Jean-Luc Godard.

Now I winced as I heard that Godard was up for this award, since I knew that either it meant he was severely ill — the Oscars seem to have the inside track on old filmmakers who are dying — or that they were prepping “Godard fan” Quentin Tarantino to make a presentation and gush about Band A Part once more. The award seems to be pegged to the fact that this is the 50th anniversary of A bout de souffle (Breathless), and someone at Oscar Central decided that seminal film needed to get some belated recognition. Hey, they passed on giving Citizen Kane anything way back when, so Orson got the same kind of honorary business many, many years down the line — pictures that change cinema don’t really have top priority in the skewed vision of the movies that guides the Oscars (Kubrick never really nabbed anything for being a visionary, so just forget about connecting the Oscars to what is taught in film school as genius filmmaking).

Ah, but this blog entry isn’t just a chance for me to carp about how this belated gesture seems too little, too late (since you know they’re not honoring Godard for the whole of his stunning cinematic oeuvre, but more for his having made a trendsetting pic back in the era of Mad Men). The “story” surrounding the announcement that Godard will receive this honorary award has become more about the fact that he hasn’t yet gratefully acknowledged the prize than the fact that he’s not likely to show up to receive it. Vanity Fair published a bizarre blog piece today noting that Uncle Jean hadn’t yet answered the Academy — a whole 24 hours after their representative called! (hey, be grateful we even considered you for this high honor, which we won’t be making part of our official ceremony!).

Another blogger mocked the ginned-up non-story, and noted that Kevin Brownlow, who is currently 72, was woken up out of a sound sleep at night in England to be told the news by an Oscar rep (Hollywood does not acknowledge that the rest of the world lives in different time zones). All these gents are being invited to a prestigious shindig that is taking place on November 13 of this year, which will most likely be glimpsed in a two-minute quick-cut montage on the actual Oscarcast.

Godard has a history of not showing up in recent years to any film festivals where his work is showing, or to fests that honor him with Lifetime Achievement Awards. He seemed to be considering accepting the European Film Awards' 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award when he agreed to a few interviews a few weeks before the ceremony — and then he never showed up to claim the prize (then again, please check out the EFA’s list of honorees — much as I dearly love the Monty Python troupe, their "lifetime achievement" in cinema is in the realm of one excellent and four very fun movies). The official quote he gave at the time to the EFA was "I say at the same time ‘thank you’ and ‘no, thank you,’" which is thoroughly consistent with his behavior in the past 45 years or so.

I believe that the Academy might waive its no-Lifetime-Achievement-presentations-on-air rule for Coppola, if only because his friends, and one assumes, presenters, are A-list names in the business. But the incredibly important Mr. Brownlow and the hardworking Wallach will certainly get merely what Corman and Bacall got this year on the televised ceremony — a quick mention from the stage, and a wave to the camera from the audience (I was surprised the honorees weren’t moved to the back where resident senior Mickey Rooney is always seated; so much for Hollywood’s pride in its past….).

I’ll end on a note that is quite familiar to Godard fans, his letter to the New York Film Critics Circle in 1995 when they announced they were giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award. It is written with tongue-in-cheek and with film references galore (including ones familiar only to students of his career). Ah... the Bleecker Street Cinema!

Dear Sir,

Thanks for your electronic mail dated January 20 — 11:24 am. Too little good health. Too big snow to the airport, and too few banknotes saved for the ticket. Hollywood always used to say that your servant is not fit for telling stories. I therefore said in the last chapter of my stories of cinema [Histoires du cinema(s)] that nothing is lost, except honor.

And it is then my duty — no copyright, only copyduties — not to accept any longer the honor of your reward. Do please accept the incomplete following reasons for such genuine and shy statement.

JLG was never able through his whole movie maker/goer career to:
Prevent M. Spielberg from rebuilding Auschwitz,
Convince Mrs. Ted Turner not to colorize past and dear funny faces,
To sentence M. Bill Gates for naming his bug's office Rosebud,
To compel New York Film Critics Circle not to forget Shirley Clarke,
To oblige Sony ex-Columbia Pictures to imitate Dan Talbot / New Yorker Films when delivering accounts,
To force Oscar people to reward Abbas Klarostami instead of Kieslowski,
To persuade M. Kubrick to screen Santiago Alvarez shorts on Vietnam.
To beg Ms. Keaton to read Bugsy Siegel's biography.
To shoot Contempt with Sinatra and Novak, 
etc., etc.,

I'm still not over, dear Sir, through my long voyage to the home of cinematography, but I missed indeed quite a lot of ports of call — no girls in every port, but no honors neither I could deserve.

Do please ask the distinguished audience some indulgence for the piteous English of your colleague and send the reward to the Bleecker Street Cinema if remaining.

Faithfully yours,
Jean-Luc Godard

Thanks to David Arthur-Simons for passing on the text of JLG's letter.

“No rights, only duties”: new interviews with Uncle Jean

Since I wrote the blog post below, there has been more new Godard-info on the Net. The New York Times has published a review of Film Socialisme that indicates it is indeed the dense and brilliant work we’ve all been expecting it to be. Of course, reading the review my mind went off onto a Godardian tangent, wondering if Manohla Dargis has finally moved to NYC, or whether she’s still telecommuting her reviews in from L.A. (Who would have ever thought that the “paper of record” in a major U.S. capital of culture would make its chief film critic someone who wouldn’t deign to live in the city in which the paper was published? Ah, but then again, I’m so old-fashioned and analog, and her insights are really so invaluable a bi-coastal hookup was totally necessary….)

But, veering away from that missive from the shores of privilege and onto the latest classically contrarian statements by Uncle Jean, I point your attention to the invaluable translations of current Godard interviews being served up on the Cinemasparagus blog by Craig Keller. Craig recently provided translations of various Godard items, including an interview from the film’s press kit and two current magazine/website interviews. The first magazine interview is a chat between Uncle Jean and “child of ’68” turned mainstream politico Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Télérama. The article finds JLG probing his friendship with, and memories of, “Dany” while also noting that he engages in contradiction in his statements not for “fun,” but “to provoke an argument, in the sense of the Greeks.” Craig’s translation can be found here.

Another, even more quotable, interview with the Master can be found in the pages of the current issue of Les Inrockuptibles. Craig has provided a translation of this talk too, and there are plenty of interesting statements from Godard. His latest film took four years to create, and thus he wishes it was distributed in a rather unique way (this odd scenario is offered to both the Inrockuptibles interviewer and Cohn-Bendit). He also voices his support for the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and (gasp) Roman Polanski. The wonderful phrase from Film Socialisme, “what’s different these days is that the bastards are sincere” is explored; he reaffirms his disinterest in Truffaut’s more conventional later films (they were “not what we were dreaming of”); and he was the one who proposed YouTube as the site for his infamous trailers (which consist of the whole feature sped up to different commercial-style lengths). Find out his view of posterity, ownership of art, intellectual property (take a guess), and the words that might well wind up on his gravestone here.

Why I will continue to love Uncle Jean

News about Godard's latest, Film Socialisme, upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Followers of his work, and readers of this blog, will remember, that he has already fashioned and made available online a series of trailers that show the film in its entirety, but sped up to a four-minute and a minute-and-a-half duration.

The legendary French film director Jean-Luc Godard, whose latest work, Film Socialisme, is showing at Cannes this week, has decided to run its subtitles in "Navajo English" as in old Westerns where the Native Americans spoke in choppy phrases. Because the drama takes place on a cruise ship where no one speaks the same language, Godard has fashioned his subtitles concisely to say the least. If a character is saying "give me your watch", the subtitle will read "You, me, watch."

The text above appeared on the site for the Independent here. JLG continues to be the oldest enfant terrible around.

Godard's latest provocation, and a tribute to his "brother" in cinema

This week on the Funhouse I’m paying tribute to filmmakers whose work I love: the Kuchar brothers, Nicholas Ray, and Marco Ferreri. Thus, I thought it would be only fitting to pass along links to two new short works by a gent who dwells in the top of my personal Pantheon, Jean-Luc Godard, aka “Uncle Jean” for those who care.

Godard’s “older brother” Eric Rohmer died some weeks back, as I chronicled here. Well, there was a very special night Feb. 8th at the Cinematheque Francaise, where various friends and collaborators of Rohmer shared their memories of the man. The participants included Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle, and Claude Chabrol. Uncle Jean was present in the form of a short film that he and the Cinematheque have allowed to be shown on the Internet. The page containing Godard’s film and tributes by the other celebrities (in French, no subs) can be found here.

However, for those who don’t speak/read French, and would like to have the “in” references to Rohmer and Godard’s friendship decoded, I’d recommend visiting “The Auteurs” website to read the comments that were posted below the film, which basically translate Godard’s narration, and also explain what his references are about. The film is beautifully done (no surprise) and perhaps the grace note is JLG’s final citation of the last line of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, “That was the happiest time we ever had.” Uncle Jean is getting sentimental in his old age, and it’s very touching. We’re very lucky to still have him around.

And because he is still primed and ready to make cinema, I should direct you to the weirdest “stunt” associated with any of his recent-vintage films. Various trailers have been posted online for his latest film, Socialisme, which is set to do the film festival circuit shortly. I linked to the original trailer for the film here.

Because he will always be a provocateur in addition to one of the premier cinema poets, though, he also has provided two other trailers that are wholly unique: their visuals comprise the *entire movie* played at very fast speed. Thus, you can “see” the whole film in its visual state, which means that Godard is either commenting on the nature of trailers “revealing” the heart of a movie — or he is possibly pissed at his producers or distributors. In any case, it’s a very weird experience to watch what is surely a 90-minute film flying by in four minutes, with onscreen titles explaining what one will encounter in the film (things, words, etc.).

Here is the four-minute version of the trailer:



And for those with real ADD, here is Godard’s one-and-a-half minute version:



And for those who’d just like to see the actual, “normal” trailer for the film, replete with English subtitles, here it is. The fact that “god” is part of the man’s name is not at all in accurate.

Silence is Golden: Gerard Courant’s “Cinématon” portraits

Yeah, go ahead and blame Andy Warhol again. Warhol’s various conceptual practices have lived on in a number of different ways, and his "screen test" idea seemingly was given new life by the French film artist Gerard Courant in the 1980s. Courant has been making avant-garde/"underground" films from 1976 to the present day. I have to confess my ignorance of his work until I encountered this odd silent study of our hero Uncle Jean:



The YouTube posting links back to Courant’s site, which has a full filmography and biography of the gentleman, plus a few dozen more of these “Cinématon” shorts, as he calls them. The films are silent studies of various folks associated with the film industry and, to my mind, they succeed best in doing one thing: offsetting the awful profusion of Entertainment Tonight/E! Channel/DVD "supplement" interviews in which the filmmaker or performer is asked to summarize his/her role in the movie, or retell the damned plot of the picture.

I’m not certain if Courant got these studies under the auspices of press junkets or a film festival — it looks to be the latter — but what he did was to conduct an experiment that will delight some and bore others, but which does bear a relation to the press-junket phenomenon, in which a TV reporter/journalist/hack (pick yer poison, folks) comes into a room with a person representing a film and gets 5-10 minutes time to barrage them with questions, most of which they’ve been answering all day. Courant’s studies cut out the Q&A aspect out entirely, and what you’re left with is the person’s face, and gestures (if they chose to make any). The filmmakers seem awkward on camera (unless they chose to, no surprise, keep talking, as if the study was still an interview), but it’s interesting to note that even some of the performers — as with the lovely and talented Sandrine Bonnaire — seem awkward in front of Courant’s camera.



Courant’s “Cinématon” call to mind portrait photography and silent cinema, but they also serve another purpose: to commemorate the Deceased Artistes he encountered, including the New Wave queen of the pout, the sacred actress who starred in several Godard and Rivette films, Juliet Berto. Also, since time doth move on, Courant also has recorded the fashion “choices” folks made, as with Wim Wenders’ early Eighties “new wave” hairdo (Wenders chooses not to address Courant’s camera, but to ignore it instead — perhaps as a result of his own work as a still photographer).

And last, we learn a very obvious lesson: that comedians can’t be still and “studied” — especially not by a serious-minded art filmmaker. I highly recommend the “Cinématon” of one of my faves, Roberto Benigni (I love Benigni deeply, and think Americans have to just to forget his wacky behavior at the Oscars a decade ago, and that awful, way-too-often-shown Blake Edwards pic he made….). True to his nature, Roberto continues to talk in his film portrait, but what he’s saying is instantly “readable” to those who know elementary French: he was “pas payé” (not paid) for what he’s doing, thus the Gainsbourg-ian destruction of money. Benigni experiments at one point with leaving frame entirely, which becomes the keynote of another comic performer/artist’s portrait, Terry Gilliam. Terry “eats” money rather than tearing it, futzes around with the frame, and actually questions the time factor by counting down until his “disappearance”:



Having done a number of press junkets, I have to say that, while you can indeed get some very good answers from the “strapped-in” participants if you ask them different questions (and don’t have them recite the fucking plot or reflect on their characters!), perhaps Courant’s approach is the proper one: get rid of words entirely….

Hidden in Plain Sight: Godard rarities on Daily Motion

Though nowhere near the insane rabbit-hole that YouTube is, Daily Motion contains many clips that are not on YT: primarily things that have a “wisp” of nudity or have been posted there so they will escape the errant Kopyright Kops who sporadically patrol YT (you pay on DM, however, by having to suppress the ads that pop up at the bottom of the image about once every three minutes). Since Godard is arguably the greatest living cinema master, I went diving to see what Uncle Jean rarities the site has to offer and found the items below.

First, a June 2009 interview with JLG in which he is quite happy to talk about his early exposure to cinema, Contempt, and the film frame, among other topics (no English subs):

Jean-Luc Godard - juin 2009

Here is an absolutely goofy ad for Godard’s Detective (1985), which I’m willing to bet good money he had nothing to do with (unsubbed, but it’s so ridiculous you’ll figure it out — the trenchcoated guy is saying the dame didn’t want to see this great movie):

TRAILER GODARD DETECTIVE 1984 FILM CLIP ANNONCE CINEMA FR HQ

Here is a commercial that Godard *did* direct, with tongue-in-cheek while he was in the midst of his “Marxist phase” in 1970:

PUB SCHICK 1970 JEAN LUC GODARD PUBLICITE RETRO CINEMA HQ

An early JLG short, Charlotte et Son Jules (1960, but made before Breathless), in which the young lead actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, is dubbed by Uncle Jean himself (J-P was doing his military service, and Godard assured him that he would use him in his first feature in return for this indulgence):

Godard - Charlotte et son Jules

In 1968, Godard, Chris Marker, and several other filmmakers put together no-budget “Cinetracts,” made on 16mm and meant to be seen as soon as possible in any circumstances whatsoever. This Cinetract, no. 19, looks to be the work of Uncle Chris rather than Uncle Jean. There are no subtitles, but this is a marvelously edited montage of photos of the May ’68 Paris riots, reminiscent of Marker’s La Jetée:

Ciné tract 19

Cinetract no. 23 was definitely made by JLG, as his handwriting is literally all over it. Here is agit-prop filmmaking at its late-twentieth century best:

Ciné tract 23

An exquisite short from 2000, “The Origins of the 21st Century.” The film is a wonderfully poetic survey of the horrors (and occasional beauty) of the twentieth century, that moves backward in time and is punctuated by images from a host of movies including The Shining, Breathless, Los Olvidados, The Silence and The Nutty Professor, and ends with the use of a beautifully appropriate moment from Ophuls’ Le Plaisir. (subtitled en Espanol). This is the height of Godard’s art:

Godard-L'origine du XXIème siècle

Prière pour le refuznik (2006) is a pair of shorts about the Israeli conscripts who refuse to serve in the Occupied Palestinian territory. The first features a scene from Uncle Jean’s own Les Carabiniers set to a song by Léo Ferré:

prière pour refuznik (1) - jean-luc godard

The second is an even more beautiful meditation on the theme (called a “mini-oratorio” by one Net source). The final title evokes “Earth versus sky”:

prière pour refuznik (2) - jean-luc godard

Voices of the New Wave: translated vintage Cahiers

As the world mourns the passing of a guy (that Hughes dude) whose career started with fairly decent articles in National Lampoon, proceeded with some era-defining cute comedies (remember, the Eighties was the Empty Decade, kids), and then morphed into being involved with some seriously awful films (Dutch, Flubber, Beethoven, and the scarily atrocious Curly Sue), I sit around reading very rare translated articles from Cahiers du Cinema about the great American filmmakers, including le cineaste to the right (I'm so proud I own that book).

The location for this is the Blogspot of J.D. Copp, which can be found here. Copp has been translating from French to English lists, “thumbnail” director portraits, reviews, and snippets from interviews that appeared in Cahiers du Cinema in the magazine’s golden age (the Fifties and Sixties, when the staff was comprised of many fledgling filmmakers and wannabe auteurs). I found that the best way to review Copp’s blog is to simply move from page to page (read: month to month), but you can also use the search function atop his blog to search the names of certain directors who are discussed in the items he has translated.

One caveat: Copp’s mode of translation leans to the literal and in fact might be declared "stiff” in certain linguistic regards (sorry, I’m a copy editor by day, I notice this stuff). One could argue that he could be a little more liberal in terms of rewording the French text into truly smooth English, but the service he’s providing to those who don’t read French at all, or who can, but don’t have ready access to the Cahiers archives, is indeed invaluable. To add to the positive side of the ledger, he also translates passages from books he’s reading in French (thus far untranslated into English, obviously) that have anecdotes concerning the Cahiers “posse,” most notably Truffaut and Godard.

Copp’s specialty are the “best” lists compiled by the magazine, which included a special feature called the “Conseil des dix,” which found ten critics assigning critical “ratings” to the latest releases showing in Paris. Included were the “Glimmer Twins” of the nouvelle vague (right), as well as their many compatriots including Rohmer, Rivette, and Chabrol. In the process, Copp’s blog presents many oddball pairings of critic and subject, including this note from our fave, Uncle Jean (Godard), who was looking forward to seeing South Pacific:

Such is the opening of South Pacific from the Rodgers and Hammerstein operetta where Joshua Logan has redone these couplets in his own words. Apart from that, Todd-AO, six million dollars, the Hawaiian Islands, Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr and under the paternal eye of Buddy Adler, introducing France Suyen [sic]. Doubt is not permitted, esthetically speaking, the next film of Joshua Logan will be colossal."

Copp’s blog also focuses a great deal of attention on Truffaut, who of course was the most radical critic of the New Wave group — therefore the head-scratching that occurs when one confronts the fact that his later films were like the ones he was raking over the coals in the Fifties. His original storyline for Godard’s A bout de souffle (Breathless) can be found here.

Copp has been doing posts that group together excerpts from Cahiers reviews of certain director’s work. Among these are Wilder, Wise, Wyler (no, no Welles yet), Mankiewicz, and even the critics’ fellow cineaste Alain Resnais. The two things that Copp has included that are invaluable for me especially are translations of Godard’s narration for his epic Histoire(s) du Cinema, which still doesn’t have a legal release in this country, because ALL the distributors are terrified of having to clear the clips Uncle Jean used without legal clearance. Copp’s translations of JLG’s cinematic poetry (the words, that is) begins here.

Oh, and yes, Copp has provided us with translations of excerpts from dozens of Cahiers reviews of the films of (you guessed this one, right?) Jerry Lewis —seen in the pic to the right, reading the magazine! I heavily recommend you check out Copp’s survey-post which can be found here.

But being a major fan of Joseph Levitch et son cinema (and that of Frank Tashlin, the man he arguably lifted his directorial style from), I must repeat some of the juicer passages here. In this case Copp’s literal translation produces some passages that appear as if they were made up by a humorist trying to prove a point about “the French and their love of Jerry Lewis” (my response to that one is always to remind the scoffer that they also loved Ford, Hitchcock, Ray, Fuller, Cassavetes, Altman, and Scorsese before we did):

Today, it is possible to define Lewis's character, yet, it is not possible to define the respective roles of the director, the actor and the character which he embodies. But is not the key to this universe precisely this division? And is not his visage, metaphorically, the mirror?

At the beginning, the Cahiers boys were not very kind, referring to Scared Stiff as containing the “usual clowning of two half-wits of American film.” The Money From Home review refers to Martin and Lewis as “a pair of nitwits even more nitwit than all the others.” A later Godard review of Hollywood or Bust found Uncle Jean proclaiming that “in 15 years [it will be seen] that The Girl Can't Help It functioned, in its time, meaning today (1957), as a fountain of youth where the cinema of now, meaning tomorrow (1972) drew a renewal of inspiration.”

The very curious review for The Ladies Man (which in French was titled “the Stud for these Ladies”) gets into what the reviewer calls “argument Lewis” (“argument for Lewis” or "the case of Lewis" would be a more liberal translation). The last sentences of the snippet Copp reproduces say “Yes, there is a depth to laughter but there is also a shame of laughter. From one to the next, the argument Lewis, to our mind, offers a good example.” I assume this means one should feel, by turns, deeply happy and full of shame watching a Jerry picture.

Other odd remarks include one about Visit to a Small Planet: “Ever since he has gone out on his own, Jerry Lewis no longer bases his films on homosexuality, but on powerlessness.” Whoa, baby. And of course there are the moments where the praise was incredible, as with a positive review of the unbelievably indulgent The Big Mouth: “The refinements of construction, the physical-metaphysical reach of the slightest gag, the tidal wave of madness which bowls over the dimensions of space, time and cinema, force us to dedicate a special issue to their analysis. The Big Mouth marks the center of gravity, the inevitable outcome of the previous films of Lewis.”

That's a far cry from the first review of a solo Jer movie, The Delicate Delinquent, which was one of many times the critics mentioned that Jerry was at his best when directed by Tashlin (which is definitely true): “With Tashlin absent, Dean Martin's partner is not the equal of Fernandel on his worst day.” Damn, that hurts.

Thanks to friend Paul for the discovery of Copp’s treasure trove of translation!

We welcome Socialisme: a new missive from Uncle Jean

At this point when the cinema seems bankrupt of ideas and, more importantly, of reflection, it is a true joy to announce that one of the greatest film poets ever is still hangin’ around amongst us, and his powers haven’t diminished. The trailer for Godard’s latest feature, Socialisme, plays like his beautiful video essays and “later” features (some reaching back as far as the early Eighties) in which he developed a style that is the closest thing to pure cinema outside of the underground. He is an Old Master by virtue of his age, but retains a fresh approach to the medium. His rhythms are his own, and when I watch his work, I feel like most of the other folks wielding film and video cameras are just fuckin’ around....

The image above has a caption that reads, "What's changed these days is that the bastards are sincere."

New Yorker Films unspools its last

Arthouse film fans with long memories were depressed this week by the announcement of the closing of New Yorker Films, a firm that has been one of the key U.S. distributors of some of the greatest European filmmakers of the Sixties through the Eighties. I have very mixed feelings about this. Firstly, of course New Yorker owner Dan Talbot and company did an invaluable service to all of us in getting the work of these filmmakers (including Godard, Straub and Huillet, Fassbinder, Herzog) to the public when it counted. However, as VHS/DVD purveyors, New Yorker has not exactly been a fan-friendly label. It's not the lack of supplements on their discs — I can't fault a company for not having the dough (or the Criterion-like reputation) to acquire the rights to extras.

However, as a VHS label, New Yorker was the first company to introduce the dreaded MacroVision copyguard process that not only prevented copying of the tape, but also made the viewing experience pretty dreadful (the picture "breathed" if you had a lower-cost VCR). They also had a practice of putting out quite little of their back-catalogue on tape and DVD, concentrating primarily on their latest releases. I’d be surprised every time MOMA or another rep house would do festivals with extremely rare European films of a certain vintage, seeing a “New Yorker Films Presents” logo right before the “lost” picture began. The question “why the hell has this been kept on the shelf?” constantly came to mind — with individual titles, like Agnes Varda’s Les Creatures, as well as entire filmographies, like that of Jean-Marie Straub (two of his films have been released on disc by New Yorker, none on VHS, despite the fact the company had seemingly acquired almost all of his output).

As DVD became the medium of choice, I think that one of the central factors to New Yorker-distributed films “disappearing” was the issue of print condition. DVD is a format that has touted “perfection” since it first appeared, and as one looks back at some New Yorker VHS releases, it becomes apparent that, for a DVD release to have materialized, the company would have had to have acquired a pristine copy of the film from its country of origin, restored it if wasn’t already restored, and then re-subtitled it. Thus an essential title like Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (seen at right) just disappeared in the transition from medium to medium. The company would return to its back-catalogue sporadically (as with the latter-day releases of Herzog’s shorts, Godard’s Week-end and Straub’s Moses and Aaron), but mostly the label seemed to be staying away from the older titles, even as DVD was offering a new life for classic foreign films.

It also came to light when the Fassbinder films were eventually put out in pristine prints by other labels, that New Yorker’s video label had *re-framed* the films for their VHS releases to turn them from 1:33 "square" films to 1:66 "letterboxed" titles — presumably in an effort to make them look less than “television shows” and more like “art movies.”


But back to the efforts of Talbot and co. back in the Sixties, which are indeed worthy of gratitude from American cinema buffs (Talbot's purchases seemed like a "wish list" of items lauded by the great Susan Sontag in her essays and reviews). As for the theater that gave the company its name, I only went there when it was in its final years of existence (when this picture of it was presumably snapped), but it was a grand theater when it was around. The 88th and Broadway movie palace (below) is now best-remembered as the place where Woody introduces Marshall McLuhan to the know-it-all in Annie Hall.

A list of some of the filmmakers whose works were distributed by New Yorker (besides those named above) would include Ozu, Bertolucci, Losey, Bresson, Rohmer, De Antonio, Pereira dos Santos, Tanner, Sembene, Rocha, Diegues, Oshima, Wenders, Schlondorff, Fellini, Wajda, Rossellini, Kieslowski, Pialat, Handke, Malle, Chabrol, Kurys, and Skolimowski. From the high-water marks set by these releases, we come to the point where stories circulated about the poor quality of New Yorker prints that were leased to local film festivals, and arguments over money required for the rentals of certain key films in a director’s oeuvre. They were not pretty stories, and not worthy of a company considered the “best friend” in America of these same filmmakers.


It will be interesting to see who acquires the company’s catalogue; it doesn’t say in this New York Times article about the company biting the dust. Perhaps we do stand a chance of finally seeing new prints of New Yorker’s key European films (like Jean Eustache's amazing The Mother and the Whore, right) on DVD — or whatever medium rules in the years to come.

Godard's latest short available online

Our hero Uncle Jean has once again produced a short film, weaving a "trailer" from old film, poetry, and classical music. I can’t tell you how happy I am that he is still around (a very young 77), providing us with gorgeous telegrams from his Swiss hideout, delighting our eyes, minds, and emotions. He is one of the finest poets the cinema has ever known.

The film is intended as a “trailer” for the Venice International Film Festival (click on the "Viennale Trailer 2008" link). For best visual quality visit their site:

http://www.viennale.at/english/index.shtml

If you just need a quick fix, it's up on YT from about five posters: