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Beaver = *****

Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

Have I got the point about right?

BrianInAtlanta wrote:Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

Have I got the point about right?

Why not.

You're dangerously close to putting Godard in a (very appropriate) nutshell.

david hare wrote:One which I would take him out of, toute suite.

Obviously - me too. However funny that people try to put him into something anyway…

BrianInAtlanta wrote:Well, to start off a discussion after watching it, this seems to be the first film in a series that ends with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her about how modern life is a blight on Paris with ugly buildings, advertisements, neon and commercialism. Men try to rebel against this, knowing how politically wrong it all is, although they usually prove impotent and self-destructive. Women, however, utterly obsessed with style and possessions, fall for every bit of it since they are so vain and shallow.

One of many reasons this seems too simplistic is that Godard also aestheticizes the "ugly" accessories of modern life, particularly with the many gorgeous shots of industrial buildings in 2 or 3 Things -- he's simultaneously fascinated and repelled by junk culture, by surface style. I don't think he ever sees things in such a straightforward either/or fashion; he's fascinated by dichotomies but wants to have both sides of a contradiction or paradox present at once.

sevenarts wrote:he's simultaneously fascinated and repelled by junk culture, by surface style. I don't think he ever sees things in such a straightforward either/or fashion; he's fascinated by dichotomies but wants to have both sides of a contradiction or paradox present at once.

So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

MichaelB wrote:

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

sevenarts wrote:Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

tartarlamb wrote:I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

Well, later Godard in part serves as a 'corrective' to this; it's more the men who start to look a bit ridiculous (Numéro Deux, Sauve Qui Peut (la vie), Prénom Carmen, Je vous salue, Marie, etc). It doesn't exactly excuse the reductiveness (or perceived reductiveness) of earlier work, but JLG did move on to a less binary view of the sexes. By Nouvelle vague, men and women are very much on equal footing.

sevenarts wrote:

MichaelB wrote:

BrianInAtlanta wrote:So junk culture to Godard is beautiful and seductive but empty and distracting from man's true goals. Is there anything else he presents in a similar way?

Anna Karina?

Also, political ideas. Religion/spirituality. The cinema. Seriously, Godard's whole oeuvre is packed with examples of these kinds of contrasts and dichotomies. It's why no true understanding of his cinema can ever focus on just one aspect or side of his ideas; ideas and images in Godard's films are usually closely accompanied by their opposites.

See, e.g., the Pierrot trailer.

Oedipax wrote:

tartarlamb wrote:I understand what you're saying -- I just wish that Anna Karina, and women in general, weren't treated as seductive "junk" or "ugly accessories" in the process. And the men as poor, victimized intellectual youths led astray. It comes of as an intensely alienating probing of otherness and, to me, ordinary misogyny.

Well, later Godard in part serves as a 'corrective' to this; it's more the men who start to look a bit ridiculous (Numéro Deux, Sauve Qui Peut (la vie), Prénom Carmen, Je vous salue, Marie, etc). It doesn't exactly excuse the reductiveness (or perceived reductiveness) of earlier work, but JLG did move on to a less binary view of the sexes. By Nouvelle vague, men and women are very much on equal footing.

What about Contempt, where the men are the more deluded characters clinging to make believe while the women drive the film through their action (or inaction)? Add to that the way that 'poor, victimised, intellectual youths' seem childish and impulsive in film like Band of Outsiders. Or cynical and petty poseurs, ready with withering criticism of others in Masculin Feminin but little insight into themselves.

And while both the main characters in Weekend are scumbags (along with everyone else), plotting to go off and kill the guy's mother for the money she will leave in the will to them so they can fund their consumer lifestyle further and then double cross each other, at least the female member gets co-opted into a radicalist/cannibal movement (and gets another short lived boyfriend) while her partner ends up in the cooking pot!

Though Godard claims to have never seen Persona before accidentally requesting it for his lecture, it should be noted that he's fibbing-- coincidentally enough, I had selected the same still at random from the DVD months before the near-identical one was used in the MOC booklet.

Well there's a point of view.

Indeed!

One of the best booklets by any company.

From the new MOC catalogue:

And, from the downloadable pdf now up on the website:

#093 MAN HUNT Fritz Lang 1941
#101 NO QUARTO DA VANDA Pedro Costa 2000
#102 COLOSSAL YOUTH Pedro Costa 2006

And in a separate Blu-Ray numbering sequence:

#1 SUNRISE F. W. Murnau 1927
#2 MAD DETECTIVE Johnnie To / Wai Ka Fai 2007
#3 TOKYO SONATA Kurosawa Kiyoshi 2008
#4 UNE FEMME MARIÉE Jean-Luc Godard 1963
#5 FOR ALL MANKIND Al Reinert 1988
#6 FANTASTIC PLANET René Laloux 1973
#7 SOUL POWER Jeffrey Levy-hinte 200#7
#8 CITY GIRL F. W. Murnau 1930

All great news, of course, but that Godard Blu-Ray smarts having just bought the DVD!

Dammit I just ordered the Koch version from DVD Planet. Why didn't I read this thread first, I ask you? Why?

(Is the Koch really that bad?)

Noiretirc wrote:Dammit I just ordered the Koch version from DVD Planet. Why didn't I read this thread first, I ask you? Why?

(Is the Koch really that bad?)

I can't notice a difference when watching. The MOC has a great companion booklet, however.

I'd be very surprised if the Koch versions' subtitles were anything like as conscientious as the MoC's.

Beaver on the MOC Blu-ray.

That has to be the earliest review ever, two months before release! [-(