Jean-Luc Godard – Faut pas rêver AKA Dream On (1977)
As a model, one can see working the essential virtues of the Godardian question in a relatively unknown work from 1978 [recte 1976]—a two-minute video clip for a popular song by Patrick Juvet, Faut Pas Rêver.
As is the case with all the brief forms invented by Godard, this little opus is not in the least a minor work. It is made up of two shots: first, a medium fixed shot of a little girl who is eating an apple for her afternoon snack after coming home from school; she is responding to her mother, whom we don’t see (the voice of Anne-Marie Miéville is recognisable) and who asks her about her day, while the little girl watches, distractedly, a television set that is supposedly broadcasting the song of Patrick Juvet (whom we don’t see either) In this everyday dialogue, we find the emergence of a fundamental critical question that, in the mid-1970s, must have been perceived as quite violent (at that time we were right in the middle of the Giscardian regime, and it would take seven more years for the left to come to power).
We also find here a little study on the problem of off-screen. The positioning out of frame, in turn, of the song, of the mother, and of the television set leaves room for an image of ordinary life, convincing particularly in proportion to its modesty and to its passive nature (the little girl is tired: she is relaxing; she is doing nothing; all the active elements remain at a distance). But this image of ordinary life cannot be the only image called for by the question written on the screen.
The shot here possesses three layers of meaning: first, a polemical meaning, as the shot positions itself, in its simplicity, against false ideological images, since the frame obstructs the televised images and keeps them out of play; second, an actual and relative meaning, since the shot does not pretend to fulfil the programme that the critical question announces; third, the shot is a sample or a glimpse of an alternative, creating a gap in the ordinary stream of dominant images. In this way, the shot here turns into a “Problem” in the Godardian sense that we are trying to construct: that is to say, it is always at the same time polemical, prospective, and dialectical.
Nicole Brenez (translated by Jann Matlock), The Forms of the Question. In: Michael Temple, James S. Williams & Michael Witt (eds.), For Ever Godard. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp. 160–177, here: pp. 162–3
31.6MB | 3m 33s | 352×288 | mpeg
https://nitro.download/view/DCB8DAE48CAA661/GODARD_Faut_pas_rever_.mpeg
https://nitro.download/view/A8C668D1280D49F/GODARD_Faut_pas_rever_.srt
Language:French
Subtitles:English