Godard & Gorin, according to the profitable contract signed with the publicity agency Dupuy Compton, from which they had a salary, were forced to propose one project per month and deliver at least one advertisement film per year. For Schick, they got the budget to pay the hole crew for a week, even though the shooting only took half a working day.
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In his meetings with various different people, Jean-Luc Godard develops his thinking about history, politics, the cinema, images and time, and this will lead to his exhibition as an artist at the Pompidou Centre. Jean-Luc Godard’s conversations with Dominique Païni, Jean Narboni, André S. Labarthe, Jean-Marie Straub, Danielle Huillet and Christophe Kantcheff were filmed at his home in Rolle, in his study, at the Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts (in front of students) and in the exhibition rooms of the Pompidou Centre.Read More »
A film about politics and the media, in which two workers in a newspaper plant attempt to make a film.Read More »
In this astonishing twelve-part project for and about television — the title of which refers to a 19th-century French primer Le tour de la France par deux enfants — Godard and Mieville take a detour through the everyday lives of two children in contemporary France.
This complex, intimately scaled study of the effect of television on the French family is constructed around Godard’s interviews with a school girl and school boy, Camille and Arnaud. Godard’s provocative questions to the children range from the philosophical (Do you think you have an existence?) to the social (What does revolution mean to you?). The programs’ symmetrical structure alternates between Camille’s and Arnaud’s segments (or movements), each of which is labelled with on-screen titles: Obscur/Chimie is paired with Lumiere/Physique; Realitie/Logique with Reve/Morale; Violence/Grammaire with Desordre/Calcul.Read More »
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Simon and Rachel love each other simply, without ‘stories’, until a first argument. The breach then opens for God to take on the appearance of Simon in order to visit or tempt Rachel. She, however, seems able to make the difference between a god, a husband and a lover, even in the same person… and some later on have noticed something too.Read More »
Letter to Jane is a 1972 French postscript film to Tout Va Bien directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin and made under the auspices of the Dziga Vertov Group. Narrated in a back-and-forth style by both Godard and Gorin, the film serves as a 52-minute cinematic essay that deconstructs a single news photograph of Jane Fonda in Vietnam. This was Godard and Gorin’s final collaboration.Read More »
Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak (1960)
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Two young people, Walter and Charlotte, are walking through a small village in Switzerland a snowy winter day. Walter introduces Charlotte to Clara, hoping to make Charlotte jealous. After saying good-bye to Clara, Walter accompanies Charlotte into her house, although she doesn’t want him to. Charlotte is hungry and cooks a steak. She asks Walter if he wants a piece of it. He says no, but she gives him a small piece anyway. He wants a kiss, and she says no. She starts to compare herself with Clara, who Walter agrees is more beautiful. In spite of this, Walter says he likes Charlotte much more, but she thinks he is lying. She notices that he is cold and shivering. She hugs him, he kisses her, and she starts kissing him. After leaving the house he accompanies her to the train.Read More »
Like its predecessor (De l’origine du XXIe siècle), The Old Place examines the role of art in history, only this time in still rather than moving images. Says Michael Althen of this piece, commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1999, “[T]he aim is not to give an overview of art history but to cut a path through the forest by asking how art relates to reality and its horrors.” Throughout its mid-length duration, reflections on art and its traces cross swords with future-oriented impulses. The questions it poses are not meant to be answered, but taken as wholesale embodiments of cultural memory, which tends to account for reality via myths and legends. As in the opening image of a monkey dangling from a tree, it is dependent on the presence of gravity to give hierarchical sensibilities a grounding from which to suspend our inhibitions.Read More »
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On a movie set, in a factory, and at a hotel, Godard explores the nature of work, love and film making. While Solidarity takes on the Polish government, a Polish film director, Jerzy, is stuck in France making a film for TV. He’s over budget and uninspired; the film, called “Passion,” seems static and bloodless. Hanna owns the hotel where the film crew stays. She lives with Michel, who runs a factory where he’s fired Isabelle, a floor worker. Hanna and Isabelle are drawn to Jerzy, hotel maids quit to be movie extras, people ask Jerzy where the story is in his film, women disrobe, extras grope each other off camera, and Jerzy wonders why there must always be a story.Read More »