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Oedipax wrote:I wonder if the Raro will have Mieville's Book of Mary? It's doubtful, I guess, but it's on my VHS copy before the main film.

'Cinema is over'

Jean-Luc Godard hardly ever talks to the press, and when he does it's as likely to be about football as film. In a rare interview, Geoffrey Macnab discovers that the original enfant terrible of the French new wave has lost none of his fire

Geoffrey Macnab
Friday April 29, 2005

Guardian

It is a balmy afternoon and Jean-Luc Godard is sitting by a French swimming pool, smoking a cigar and talking football. His new film, Notre Musique, has just received its world premiere. Midway through it, there is a reference to the famous match at Wembley in November 1953 when Hungary (the "Magnificent Magyars") defeated Billy Wright's England 6-3. Reflecting on the match, Godard, a devoted football fan as a youngster, begins to tick off the names of the Hungarian players one by one. "Apart from the goalkeeper, I remember them all," he says. There was Puskas ("the galloping major"), the right-half Bozsik ("the deputy"), Sandor ("the mad winger"), Kocsis ("the golden head"). Stanley Matthews, he adds, is the only English player who sticks in his mind.
Godard describes first watching the Hungarian team, which revolutionised world football, as being "a discovery, like modern painting." Most of the Hungarian players, he points out, were from Honved, the "club of the army". The country was under Soviet occupation. None the less, Puskas (an army officer) and his colleagues approached the game in a freewheeling, marvellously uninhibited style that contrasted with the regimentation of day-to-day life behind the Iron Curtain. The only team that has come close to Puskas's Hungary, Godard adds, was Ajax of Amsterdam during the Cruyff era. "Everybody played in attack and defence - it was like free jazz."

Godard turned 74 in December. In the twilight of his career, he remains as playful, provocative and perverse as ever. Somehow, it's no surprise that he is as eager to discuss Puskas and Stanley Matthews as to reflect on his new film. He is nothing if not contrary, and has an unerring ability to wrongfoot critics and audiences alike. At a press conference for Notre Musique, Godard fazed journalists by inviting a spokesperson for the French actors and technicians' union to take to the platform. He then sat silently as the union's gripes against the French government were detailed at length.

Humorous, lyrical and baffling by turns, Notre Musique is typical late Godard: part essay, part poetic meditation. The film, divided into three parts, begins with a rapid-fire montage sequence of stock shots from documentaries and Hollywood war movies. Lasting for around seven minutes, this section is called Hell. Godard uses a quote from the 18th-century philosopher Baron de Montesquieu to contextualise the images: "After the great flood, men came out of the earth and started exterminating each other." Alongside the battle scenes, there are shots of penguins and monkeys. "I found some pictures of American GIs in the river and I thought they made a nice follow-up to the monkeys," he explains cheerfully.

Next comes Purgatory, in which Godard returns to Sarajevo, a city also featured in an earlier film, Forever Mozart (1996). He wanders through the city, encountering journalists and academics, and discussing politics and history. We hear asides about how history is written by the victors. There are actors playing fictional characters and real people (Godard among them) playing themselves. There are near-identical images of Palestinians and Israelis on the same sea shore, but the context of these pictures is utterly different. One is of victory, the other of defeat. We hear a quote from Malraux: "Humane people don't start revolutions, they open libraries". We also see the bridge at Mostar, whose destruction in 1993 marked a low point of the Bosnian war. The bridge has now been reconstructed, amid much talk of hope triumphing over barbarism.

"I had the feeling that Sarajevo was the perfect place to shoot the film I wanted to shoot. It is the perfect illustration of purgatory," says Godard. The final part portrays heaven, albeit in heavily ironic fashion. Paradise is a leafy place in the woods, guarded by US marines.

Godard may be a famous name, but he seems resigned to the fact that his films are not now widely seen and rarely make much impact at the box-office. His reputation is such that his regular producers, Ruth Waldburger and Alain Sarde, can raise money for his new projects easily enough, but his recent career isn't exactly a commercial beanfeast. To illustrate the point, he tells a story of how he recently flew from Montr�al to New York. When he arrived, the customs officer asked him: "Mr Godard: what are you coming here for? Business or pleasure?" Godard indicated the former. The officer asked what business he was in. "Unsuccessful movies," Godard replied.

There is something paradoxical about his attitude toward cinema. He now seems despairing of the medium's ability to reinvent itself or to have any kind of social impact. "It's over," he sighs. "There was a time maybe when cinema could have improved society, but that time was missed."

Yet he continues to study film and experiment as energetically as ever. He is brutally dismissive of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and of the spate of other recent films attacking globalisation, warmongering and US cultural imperialism. "They say they are attacking Bush, but they are not doing it in movie terms, but in words." He calls Moore (in his idiosyncratic English) "just a Hollywood reporter man", and compares him unfavourably with the great cin�ma v�rit� documentary-maker Frederick Wiseman. He even suggests that Moore's work may actually have helped Bush. "It's not enough to be against Adolf Hitler. If you make a disastrous movie, you're not against Adolf Hitler." (Whether he has actually seen Fahrenheit 9/11 is not in any way apparent.)

Nor is Godard especially flattering about the legions of admirers who make reference to him in their own movies or even name their companies after him. Quentin Tarantino, for example, calls his production company A Band Apart, in deference to Godard's 1964 classic, Bande � Part. "He says he admires me, but that's not true," Godard muses, then makes a cryptic remark about the torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards in Iraq. "What is never said about Tarantino is that those prisons we are shown pictures of, where the torture is taking place, are called "reservoir dogs". I think the name is very appropriate."

Back in the 1950s, when he was writing for Cahiers du Cin�ma magazine, Godard was among the most provocative critics of his day. "The Cinema Is Nicholas Ray," he wrote. Another of his gems: "You can describe Hiroshima Mon Amour as Faulkner plus Stravinsky." Every film student knows quotes such as "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun" and "The cinema is truth 24 times a second."

He remains adept at coining polished one-liners, but now they tend to have a melancholic undertone. Ask him whether he still takes pleasure in Nicholas Ray's films and he admits he doesn't watch them any more. "It's not possible to see the films. You can only see them on DVD, which I don't like very much, because the screen is too small."

He sounds equally disenchanted with film festivals. "In the beginning I believed in Cannes, but now it's just for publicity. People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year."

Living in Switzerland, he rarely sees movies, unless he is preparing a documentary like Histoire du Cin�ma. He claims he spends his spare time watching sport and reading old Jack London novels. He doesn't keep in touch with many of the old colleagues with whom he worked in the Nouvelle Vague era. "It's like with any family. You see your relatives and then you don't. All of a sudden, they disappear and you don't know what has become of them. Ten years ago, I felt nostalgic about that period, but not any more."

No, he hasn't seen Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which re-creates the heady days in Paris in 1968 and features its own homage to his film, Band � Part. Isn't he curious about a film so close to his own experiences? "It's a past life," is all he says. He likewise parries questions about future projects, joking that all he now has in mind is "to try to play some tennis and see my analyst".

Despite Godard's reputation as an aloof, Prospero-like figure, he is a surprisingly gracious interviewee. Not that Godard relishes journalists or authors poring over his private life. Even Colin McCabe's enthusiastic biography, Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70, meets with his disapproval. "I was not glad he did it. I asked him not to, but I can't prevent someone from writing," Godard says. "He knows nothing about me. Maybe he knows some of my movies ... I was grateful to him for a time because he helped me do a few things, but that's all. It's not because you are friends at the time that you have the moral authorisation of entering the private life of another person."

Godard's treatment of his own collaborators hasn't always been chivalrous. One thinks of Truffaut's famous letter in which he suggested that if Godard ever made an autobiographical film, the appropriate title might be Once a Shit, Always a Shit. Then, there was Letter to Jane, the 1972 documentary he and Jean-Pierre Gorin made about Jane Fonda. A 52-minute deconstruction of a photo of Fonda in Hanoi, this was a cruel and mocking piece of agit-prop. "It was not a very good movie," Godard acknowledges, but adds that it was "an attempt to analyse the political work of Jane Fonda", not an attack on Fonda personally.

The director describes his new film as an optimistic one, with an underlying message that "reconciliation is possible" - but there is no disguising the his dismay about the state of his chosen profession. In one of the most poignant scenes in Notre Musique, we hear a voice asking him if small digital cameras can save cinema. There is a close-up of Godard's face: he scowls and says nothing at all. The inference is clear: the battle is already lost. As our meeting ends, I put the question to him again. There is still no answer.

Godard's treatment of his own collaborators hasn't always been chivalrous. One thinks of Truffaut's famous letter in which he suggested that if Godard ever made an autobiographical film, the appropriate title might be Once a Shit, Always a Shit.

Can someone please elaborate on this? I knew they drifted apart, but I never knew there was bad blood involved.

Colin MacCabe wrote:[Anne] Wiazemsky recalls a very violent argument that summer [1968] when Godard tried to persuade Truffaut to lend his backing to the campaign to close the Avignon festival. Truffaut refused, not only citing his friendship for Jean Vilar, the director of the festival, but also making clear that if there had to be a choice between supporting the proletarian riot police and rich kids intoxicated by revolution, then he was on the side of the police.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:The letter concluded: "I await your response without excessive impatience because if you've become one of Coppola's groupies, you'll be pressed for time and you don't want to ruin the preparation of your next autobiographical film whose title I think I know: 'A Shit Is a Shit.'" That was apparently the last contact they had.

In one of the most poignant scenes in Notre Musique, we hear a voice asking him if small digital cameras can save cinema. There is a close-up of Godard's face: he scowls and says nothing at all. The inference is clear: the battle is already lost. As our meeting ends, I put the question to him again. There is still no answer.

Godard did indeed have an association with Coppola at one point. Wish I knew what the nature of it was, what came of it, etc.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Zoetrope co-produced Sauve qui peut (la vie). I'm pretty sure that was the extent of the relationship.

'Cinema is over'

Jean-Luc Godard hardly ever talks to the press, and when he does it's as likely to be about football as film. In a rare interview, Geoffrey Macnab discovers that the original enfant terrible of the French new wave has lost none of his fire

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Relevant letters from Truffaut to Godard (and vice versa) are included in the collected edition of Truffaut's correspondence (Correspondence, 1945-1984), but I don't have that.

'Cinema is over'

chaddoli wrote:Notre Musique seemed to be by a fallen artist who still can make beautiful images, but ultimately, with nothing left to say. And this bitter, egocentric interview makes me feel that way even more.

Godard did indeed have an association with Coppola at one point. Wish I knew what the nature of it was, what came of it, etc.

Godard Slams Tarantino
Legendary director Jean-Luc Godard has hit out at Quentin Tarantino - one of his biggest admirers - for using the title of one of his 1960s films without financially rewarding him. Maverick film-maker Tarantino took the name Band A Parte (Band Of Outsiders) from the New Wave icon's 1964 movie and used it as the name for his production company. But Breathless filmmaker Godard, 74, is less than impressed by the Pulp Fiction director's intended flattery. He says, "Tarantino named his production company after one of my films. He would have done better to give me some money."

Godard Slams Tarantino

That's not even really a slam, Godard is always saying things like that. I don't get this recent trend of putting more emphasis behind what Godard is saying in his interviews than before.

I wouldn't be surprised if they flagged this quote a long time ago and simply waited until Tarantino was being talked about again (in this case because of C.S.I.) so they'd have something to write about him if the tabloid news was slow.

matt wrote:Nice cover on that Sauve qui peut (la vie) disc.

davidhare wrote:MATT!!