PotMatters Review :
Captured in beguilingly chic noir et blanc, Jean Luc Godard’s Une Femme Mariée (A Married Woman) is an erudite, somewhat autobiographical, handsome and twisted examination of female infidelity. Although it has been rather overlooked amidst Godard’s formidable body of work, it is one of his most alluring and personal cinematic endeavours and represents a critical juncture in his evolution as a film-maker.Read More »
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This short film is Godard’s message to the people of Lausanne, specifically Freddy Buache, giving his reasons why he will not make a film about their town’s 500th anniversary.
First Godard expresses his frustration with the town. When attempting to film on the side of a highway, they were forced to stop filming by the local authorities. The officer said they could only stop for an emergency. Godard replied that it was an emergency because the light was perfect. The officer wasn’t understanding, and Godard complains that it could take 5 years of shooting to get the necessary lighting again.Read More »
A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday… Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona. (IMDb)Read More »
With its giddily complex noir plot and color-drenched widescreen images, Made in U.S.A was a final burst of exuberance from Jean-Luc Godard’s early sixties barrage of delirious movie-movies. Yet this chaotic crime thriller and acidly funny critique of consumerism—starring Anna Karina as the most brightly dressed private investigator in film history, searching for a former lover who might have been assassinated—also points toward the more political cinema that would come to define Godard. Featuring characters with names such as Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, David Goodis, and Doris Mizoguchi, and appearances by a slapstick Jean-Pierre Léaud and a sweetly singing Marianne Faithfull, this piece of pop art is like a Looney Tunes rendition of The Big Sleep gone New Wave. (Criterion)Read More »
In Scénario de ‘Sauve qui peut la vie’ (1979), director Jean Luc Godard discusses many of the themes, motifs and film-making practices that would eventually be utilised in the creation of his following film, Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980). The film is interesting in the same way that Leos Carax’s later short film Sans Titre (1996) was interesting; offering us a window into his particular creative world and establishing many of the ideas and characteristics that would later be found in Carax’s own underrated masterpiece Pola X (1999). Carax, of course, is one of the filmmakers most clearly influenced by Godard, even appearing as an actor in Godard’s widely criticised adaptation of King Lear (1987), as well as paying homage to the older filmmaker with his earliest films, Boy Meets Girl (1984) and Mauvais Sang (1986).Read More »
Jean Luc Godard’s first short film. A documentary financed by his work as construction worker in Switzerland.Read More »
Godard’s meditation on things Russian and cinematic, featuring JLG himself as “The Idiot” My own not very good quality VHS recording from a NTSC TV broadcast, but I know of no other source for this. With some English narration and French dialog with subtitles. Video collages of Russian films, in the style of Histoire(s) and other Godard films of this period.Read More »