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don't forget you get about $9 euros taken off for VAT from amazon.fr if you're ordering outside of france, i think even with postage to canada it was less than 49 euros

Well, I've watched a few more episodes, and while the subtitling certainly doesn't get much better, it doesn't get any worse either so far. The beginning of Seul le cinema is a bit frustrating since it's an interview with Godard and the interviewer's lengthy questions and comments aren't translated at all. But after that it gets better. La Monnaie de l'absolu is the best one so far, practically all the voice content is subtitled since it's mostly Godard speaking throughout that one.

sevenarts wrote:Well, I've watched a few more episodes, and while the subtitling certainly doesn't get much better, it doesn't get any worse either so far. The beginning of Seul le cinema is a bit frustrating since it's an interview with Godard and the interviewer's lengthy questions and comments aren't translated at all.

This subtitling "policy" is sounding more and more bizarre - only half an interview? Are we sure this isn't a JLG-decreed leg-pull?

Oedipax wrote:At least, I'm going to wait and see what (if anything) Artificial Eye has in store.

What evidence do we have that they are going to release this? AE rarely goes to the trouble of commissioning new content, so a total re-subtitling seems unlikely.

zedz wrote:

sevenarts wrote:Well, I've watched a few more episodes, and while the subtitling certainly doesn't get much better, it doesn't get any worse either so far. The beginning of Seul le cinema is a bit frustrating since it's an interview with Godard and the interviewer's lengthy questions and comments aren't translated at all.

This subtitling "policy" is sounding more and more bizarre - only half an interview? Are we sure this isn't a JLG-decreed leg-pull?

I would imagine this isn't a "leg-pull," since Godard seems -- for various reasons, many of which I cannot disagree with in good conscience -- not to give a shit about how his films are presented as "consumer product" beyond certain basic conditions. I know in the past he has given interviews, or at least 'an interview,' decrying the condition that Gaumont had initially intended (and did) release the 'Histoire(s)' in, on videotape.

Just for the information of those who are reading this thread and who might not be familiar with some of what is presented in the 'Histoire(s),' the "interviewer" in episode 2A is Serge Daney, one of the very greatest of film critics in the history of cinema, who passed away in 1992. (As Godard once noted, somewhat polemically, French film criticism "ended" with his death.) The video footage of this interview was shot sometime between 1988 and 1991, in all likelihood; episodes 2A through 4B were not completed or presented until 1997 and 1998; 1A and 1B were first completed (in initial, ur-forms) in 1988.

Of course it's outrageous that Daney's questions aren't translated on the Gaumont DVD, but rest assured that the ECM CD-soundtrack edition of the 'Histoire(s),' which has been available for nearly six years, and consists of four hardcover books in a box set with CDs of the audio tracks of all eight episodes, presents the transcript of Daney's questions/ruminations to Godard, and Godard's responses. In short, the discussion revolves around the emergence of the New Wave and its repercussions, and the line of thought in French criticism that extends roughly from the 17th century up through (specifically) François Truffaut.

I should also note that, although of course this applies to the 'Histoire(s)' as a whole as well, Episode 2A: Seul le cinéma, is one of the landmarks of the cinema-artform across the last 100 years.

craig.

zedz wrote:This subtitling "policy" is sounding more and more bizarre - only half an interview? Are we sure this isn't a JLG-decreed leg-pull?

Yea, it's pretty odd and frustrating. And they occasionally break the "rule" by subtitling a random phrase from the middle of the interviewer's question, or by subtitling an intertitle here and there, and vice versa there are sometimes parts of Godard's answers which go unsubtitled. There's also a long film clip monologue from the end of Fatale Beaute which alternates back and forth between being subtitled and then not. It really just seems like a total half-assed job, to be honest -- like the translator deemed certain passages just not important enough or too long to spend time on. I know that everybody likes to point to the textual complexity of Histoire(s) to explain bad subtitling, but when there are long stretches of one voice speaking and nothing else, there's really no excuse.

But then again, who else is going to release this? AE hasn't even mentioned it in years, although they were originally rumored to release it way back when. And who would release it in R1? It'd be great if Criterion would get their hands on it, but at the rate they seem to be spacing out their Godard releases, they may get to it by 2030. So, though I wish Gaumont had given a bit more attention to the translations, I still can't complain too much since now I can at least see this.

In the meantime, I just ordered the ECM books/CDs so I can follow along with the complete texts on my second viewings.

sevenarts wrote:I know that everybody likes to point to the textual complexity of Histoire(s) to explain bad subtitling, but when there are long stretches of one voice speaking and nothing else, there's really no excuse....
So, though I wish Gaumont had given a bit more attention to the translations, I still can't complain too much since now I can at least see this.

In the meantime, I just ordered the ECM books/CDs so I can follow along with the complete texts on my second viewings.

Right. This comes down to bad subtitling, nothing more. While I haven't seen the Gaumont DVDs yet, I assumed that all the "English subtitles" would consist of were the same tracks that had been affixed to "English-subtitled" presentations of the works in the past, or on the 'Moments choisis'; the subtitles were just as bad on English projections (and the videotape) of the 1994 film, and masterpiece, 'JLG/JLG, autoportrait de décembre.'

At this point, because I feel bad for the people who have gotten a hold of this DVD and have no idea what's going on in 2A, and because I'm kind of put off by the fact that Daney's half seems not to have been translated at all -- and, truth be told, he speaks more than Godard in the episode; furthermore, I believe his questions were at least subtitled in the extracts from the episode that are included on prints of 'Moments choisis,' which, regardless, let's face it, does not get screened monthly, let alone annually, anywhere -- here is the English translation of the opening of Episode 2A:

GODARD: Speak in ten seconds.... Whenever you want.

DANEY: Histoires of the cinema, and television. Histoires in the plural. Both cinema and television, that's your project. Obviously there are plenty of reasons why it had to be you that had to tell it, this history. But before we get into that, what strikes me is that this could only come from someone of your generation, the New Wave generation. --

GODARD: -- Histoires with an "s". ("-- Histoire(s) -- avec un "s".)

DANEY: That's right. These days, there are lots of ways of telling lots of stories. The New Wave is perhaps the only generation which started to make cinema in the Fifties and the Sixties, which found itself in the middle both of the century and, perhaps, of the cinema.

GODARD: I'm glad you say the Fifties and the Sixties.

DANEY: Yes, because of the short films. And preparation, and then criticism as well. So, it was the middle of the century, and if we keep to the facile theory that the cinema belongs to the Twentieth Century, it was also the middle of the cinema.

GODARD: I would say that the cinema is a Nineteenth Century matter that was resolved in the Twentieth Century; there's always a time lapse.

DANEY: That's right. It had all started much earlier. That's the meaning of the word "histories" ("histoire(s)") in the plural; and the opportunity you had was that you arrived early enough to inherit a history that was already rich, and complicated, and turbulent to have seen enough films, or to have taken enough time to seen enough films as a cinephile, and then as a critic, to have acquired a personal view of what was important, or less important, in that history -- to make linear connections, even if there are gaps -- we know that Griffith comes before Rossellini, that Renoir comes before Visconti, and the exact moment of your appearance in a history that could already be recounted, that could still be recounted...

GODARD: A history that had been told, one might say, but never recounted.

DANEY: That's right. But there were still enough elements, or few enough elements still, enough gaps, but also enough -knowledge- and enough -passion- to be able to say "grosso modo" before/after, and to know one has arrived at a moment that is before and after. We are before something and then we are after something, the fact of being in the middle of the century like that, of knowing fully that you were heir to good and bad alike; what you would reject; what you would accept --

GODARD: I think a lot of time has gone into this notion of coming "before" or "after"; I myself took it up very late, actually...

DANEY: Let's say that, perhaps, someone like Truffaut was more into it -- I'm talking about a whole generation, I'm talking about the "Cahiers du cinéma" group at that time. Of course you took it up later than the others, you theorized it more than the others and later, perhaps, it made you take longer to reach maturity -- and perhaps you're the nearest thing to a historian out of "the lot," -- but that's another matter. -- It hadn't happened before, for reasons of war, of lack of opportunity to see films, or of the state of criticism, and then again it never really happened afterwards, for the utterly stupid reason that all of a sudden there were too many films to see or take in. From this sort of heritage-grown-monstrous that was the history of the cinema. Because ever since the Sixties, we have not just seen films from the big producing countries, but films from all over the world. Today, clearly, for someone 20 or 25 years old, it isn't possible, short of spending 10 or 15 years in cinematheques, not just to take in what he hasn't seen, but also to acquire an axis around which to assemble his own history, to know that he comes "after," after you among others and that he ought to define himself in relation TO that. -- And, therefore, something that used to appear simply, a brilliant anecdote in the history of French cinema, with lots of polemic and lots of panache, now appears, with hindsight, thirty years later, as the only opportunity to make history. It was given to you, and perhaps to people from the half-generation just after. I would say it holds good up to Wenders.

GODARD: Yes, I believe that's it, the only way to "make history." It's not because there were too many films -- there are very few, and fewer all the time. The literary historian says there were Homer, Cervantes, Joyce; once you've said those three, they include Faulkner, and Flaubert -- so there have been very few, I'd say -ten films-... We've got ten fingers; there are "ten films." -- The thing about movies, according to my idea, or my desire, and my unconscious, which can now be consciously expressed, is that it was the only way to go: to recount, to take account, myself; that I have a history inside myself -- but that if there were no cinema, I wouldn't know that I had a history. It was the only way, and the one that was needed. Personally, I owed it that, if you will, like a Calvinist, or Lutheran, who has a side that's always guilty, or accursed ("maudit"), as Marguerite used to say [Marguerite Duras, presumably] -- she used to say that I was "maudit." -- The only way, if one is ever going to be able to tell a story, or make history, and that has never been done -- there hasn't been any history, history of art, just a very little -- but then suddenly where the visual is concerned, cinema being partly visual, there are in effect some snippets of the history of painting which were made by the French -- not by others. -- Diderot, Baudelaire, Malraux -- I put Truffaut right after them -- there's a direct line here: Baudelaire speaking about Edgar Allan Poe is equivalent to Malraux speaking about Faulkner, is equivalent to Truffaut speaking about Edgar Ulmer or Hawks. It's only the French who have "made history"...

DANEY: The thing that all the people you mention have in common is that they knew they were "in" a history...

GODARD: They doubted that they were "in" a history...

DANEY: They wanted to know which history it was -- their history in "big history," "big history" in theirs. They also decided not to be passive recipients of their art's cultural heritage, but to find their own forerunners for themselves.

GODARD: To me, "big history" is the history of the cinema -- it's bigger than the others, because it's projected. ......

[Godard then says, in voice-over: "In a Moscow prison, Jean-Victor Poncelet, a sapper-officer in Napoleon's army, reconstructed without the aid of a single note, the geometrical pieces of knowledge he had acquired in courses taught by Monge, and by Carnot. The treatise on projective properties of figures, published in 1822, establishes as a general method the principle of projection used by Desargues to extend the properties of the circle in conical forms -- and put to work by Pascal in his lecture on the mystical hexagram. -- It thus took a French prisoner, pacing back and forth in front of a Russian wall, for the mechanical application of the idea and the wish to project shapes on a screen -- to take practical flight -- with the invention of cinematographic projection."]

Godard elaborates/transmutes this idea further in 'JLG/JLG,' in the sequence based around "projection=>the Star of David=>Israel/Palestine=>stereo."

craig.

Not the whole Cannes 87 interview is in english - in fact it is just the first answer Godard gives to the audience. Plus, not just Godards voice over gets subbed, but also most of the other off-texts/voices (but yes, pretty randomly...) The movie references/quotes don't get any subbtitling as well as the text inserts, which i think is correct as far as they stand for a certain and special image, sound ...
I can not deny that the subtitleing is far from being perfect or complete, but for someone who is not too unfamiliar with the subject it is quite cool that not everything is subtitled and sometimes seems, like someone else allready pointed out, like a compendium (?) of a sequence! It made me more aware of the image and sound - in fact, with not everything subtitled, it was the first time for me actually "seeing" the whole image ...
Just as a sidenote, this is another release about the subject:

Cinema: The Archaeology of Film and the Memory of a Century: The Archaeology of Film and the Memory of A Century (Talking Images) von Jean-Luc Godard, Youssef Ishaghpour, und John Howe von Berg Publishers Ltd




ps: and yes, the packaging is super stylo and image and sound in general seems perfect...

Well I emailed AE a little while ago about the set and haven't received a reply, so I'm thinking more and more that it will have to be the Gaumont set. I will probably get the ECM set too even though the price in Australian dollars is going to really hurt... If there are any owners of the ECM set out there (especially with the new packaging, which seems to be smaller), is it worth it? A rhetorical question I know but one that I have to ask. Thanks for your thoughts in advance....

I should clarify too, is the ECM set worthwhile in what extra translation is offered? Thanks again.

Even though the ECM set received notable prices and good reviews, i must admit that i never listend to the actual audio cd for longer than one hour... But i used the textbook(s) attached to each cd as a reference over and over again...(pretty much the whole text/written/word of the Histoire(s) is in there - French/German/English language). References like book titles etc. are marked/printed in a differnet color (that is grey - regular text is black). I once bought it "through some connection" but more than 100€ is a bit much - imo. (and it looks like it is gettin' more expensive over the years - maybe worth an investment...)

ps: i am not sure if all the text inserts are there-i have to check from home later...

DVD Beaver wrote:...many (almost all) of the various flashed title capture cards are not translated nor is the background dialogue (the latter is more understandable as it is often murmured and probably not meant to be audibly understood). In fairness I am very unsure of what is meant to be translated (this is 'art' folks) and what is not (often poetic and softly recited vocals seem intentionally vague)...

I think that's a reasonable point. And since the Beaver review makes no mention of French subs, I assume the French viewers for whom these films were intended must also manage without translation at times; e.g., in Hitchcock's discussion of montage about halfway through Le Contrôle de l'Univers.

The Spanish edition, which translates everything, populating the screen with overlapping, rapidly-changing multi-coloured text, sometimes capitalised and sometimes not, is both confusing and unattractive:

I think what we really need is for someone to write "A Complete Guide to Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema," with all the spoken audio translated, all the text, references to films & music, etc. (As has been done, for example, for some of Joyce's works.) I understand that the latter part has been done in French on the web, as referenced on the Masters of Cinema web page. It could be a major work of scholarship. If my French wasn't totally useless, I'd love to try to do such a thing. It seems like the ECM book only does part of the job. Does the ECM book really translate the text? On the ECM web page it only refers to translating the audio.

I would think this would ultimately be better than a host of subtitles, because you could look at the whole thing as you watch the film rather than having to select which subtitles to put on screen (or alternately, like the Spanish edition, have the image obscured by too many subtitles).

Any volunteers? Ha. I would think somebody would have already tried to do this by now.

Edit: And thank you, craig, for posting the translation of the opening of Episode 2A.

This may have been mentioned here in this thread, but I'm too lazy/in-a-rush to go check this website provides all of the text of Histoire(s) du Cinema in French. It'll save you from shelling out for the ECM books, but it's French only. However, if you're like me, it's a hell of a lot easier to read French than to understand it spoken, so this may help some folks out.

It's difficult isn't it? I think that in spite of the density of the spanish subs that (as long as they were removable) I'd still prefer that to missing great chunks.

As far as having access to a reference of which films are excerpted etc I have a suspicion that Godard likes it if you don't know what they are straight away. I think I like that for a few reasons - it means that Histoire will reveal more as you get older and more exposed to film (ha ha) and I like how the excerpts appropriate the emotional weight of a scene as a pure thing outside of it's context.

I'm thinking about some of the excerpts that he uses at the beginning of Notre Musique. Some of them I recognise, some of them I don't, but they have emotional impact and it's a very pure thing... I don't know who directed this excerpt or what led up to it within the film in question... but that is brutal and affecting on a gut level... if I knew the excerpt and gave it intellectual context it would remove some of that impact. I don't think it would be enough for Godard to stage a mock battle scene for example and make it look old, the fact that in another context the scene has that emotional impact lends it a weight that you couldn't have by just throwing it together.

And thanks accatone (I will probably still be shelling out for the ECM set... somehow...) and thanks evillights... that was above and beyond.

But having said all that, the reconextualisation of seeing Jerry Lewis as some sort of slobbering crazed monster in On The origin Of The 20th Century is fun...

Wonder what else is in store...

Somebody once recommended "inexperienced" watching of the Histoire(s) but i think that would be as effective as to show Week End to the s.c. working class of the 60s to get them poiliticized... After rewatching all the episodes i am almost blown away by the information given via image and sound and must find "A Complete Guide" absolutly odd. Even if you have all text translated - it wouldn't neccessarily make you understand the inherent meaning of them (especially in its juxtoposition to image and sound). Another important thing is the introduction of certain political, cultural etc. persons and their quotes - and without knowing where to put them (historical, cultural or political context) the image or quote is "almost" useless - no, not useless, but of different quality! However, i don't think the names are compensable: Lenin, Bergson, Daney, Sartre, Heidegger, Malraux, Cocteau, Taylor, Bergman, Sigfried, Thalberg etc ... and not to forget the uncountable people of the war-(images) that stand "nameless" as an opposition to the latter and are of course exchangeable...
However - to make this short - i woud recommend this edition!

not useless, but of different quality!
yes!
how exciting to have something that can unfold like that!

Does the ECM set have complete text in English?

IIRC the ECM text doesn't translate the captions or the film clips.

The Gaumont video podcast currently has a sample from the set. It appears to be a clip from one of the Cannes press conferences that are included as extras. Subscribe here.

I am not a Godard fan, but make every effort to "see the light" that obviously has eluded me so far. So I got this set. I have only skimmed through it. It seems to me that to enjoy this work one has to meet three pre-requisites: (1) one has to have an encyclopedic knowledge of European and American cinema (we can dismiss this as not essential, but I for one felt I lacked the breadth of knowledge Godard assumes his audience to possess to grasp countless references); (2) One has to know French. This is not an English-friendly set. Only the narration is subtitled, and that is not enough to enjoy the work; (3) Finally, one has to derive pleasure from Godard's brand of intellectualism. I miserably fail on all 3 counts. I spent a fair chunk of money to gain this wisdom, so thought a note of caution to balance adulation from others may be useful to the few on the forum who are as unenlightened as I.

I think anyone who claims to get everything Godard is doing is obviously a liar and very likely missing the point to begin with. Godard's long preached that you don't have to understand a film to enjoy it, you can just feel it. You obviously feel his films in a negative way, and I applaud you for doing so in a respectful manner. For me it just works, but especially with his more challenging essay films, I can definitely understand someone not enjoying the experience on a basic level.

kekid, I'm still having difficulty with his more challenging films, and as much as I am a huge fan of Godard's, I'm not willing to jump into this box set yet -- I'm still trying to wrap my head around WOE IS ME and NOUVELLE VAGUE. I feel like you have to work your way up to his most challenging works, but at some point you may find your limit. Have you tried NUMERO DEUX yet? That might be a decent warm-up to this box.

For me, I value this set much the same way I value an old friend. It's about conversation! If I can't converse with a person, that person serves no purpose to me. Same with film. If I can't converse with a piece, it is not valuable to me. Godard always offers great conversations (I understand new levels of the work each time I view it, never all of it at once), for my money this is one of his most worthwhile. Worth sipping coffee over and spending the night with, certainly.