I love Godard now. Really gotten into him in the past month. Very inspirational to me......... Week End melts my mind so bad.

Just got A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and CONTEMPT. Can't wait to watch em...

Aah..
New Wave!

Fucking amazing:

Regarding my comment about Pierret Le Fou being inspirational to Kitano earlier in this thread.. I'd like to mention that the plot of Hana-Bi is almost identical.. don't want to give it away, but basically.. two people steal some money.. murder-suicide.. on the run... having silly fun while all this violence happens around them... beach shots!... etc.

Also, "staring-directly-into-the-camera", something Kitano does on every single film... which is like my favorite thing in the world... Did Godard invent that?

I've watched A Bout De Souffle a long time ago, and thought it was good, but not great.
Then I watched Le Mepris and thought it sucked.
Then I watched A Bout De Souffle again and realized both were the same movie.
The big difference being: Belmondo is cool and charming, Seberg is lovely and charming, Piccoli is pretentious and boring, Bardot has big boobs but she act quite bad.

“It's over. There was a time maybe when cinema could have improved society, but that time was missed”. - Godard

No.
It's called 'breaking the fourth wall' and The Marx Brothers were the first to use it in films that had sound. It's a device that prior to them,
had only been done by filmmakers in silent films --for obvious reasons. Stories were told very differently back in those days.
The language of film was in it's infancy and actors had to literally spoonfeed the audiences into understanding the plot.

gaulbert-i disagree with you that breathless and contempt are "the same movie", but alot of godard's work can definitely be seen as a continuum; always working with similar ideas done with different approaches, or different ideas done with recognizable approaches.

staring into the camera has probably been done since the lumiere brothers were filming their documentaries, but godard's use of it is pretty killer. i guess what made it stand out for him was that he would disrupt the whole narrative to have one of the actors ackowledge the camera and/or audience.

i do think godard was the first to film so many scenes with the camera staring at the BACK of peoples heads (vivre sa vie)

Ah, that's what I meant, not that he invented people staring into the camera, but the way he would incorporate that into his movies to show emotional depth. He would completely interrupt the storytelling with scenes of that... Like that scene in Pierrot where Anna Karina's character says "of course" and looks at the camera... almost makes me want to cry, in all seriousness. That's what Kitano does too.. to convey "emotion", he'll have the characters stare directly into the camera. It's a neat trick.

I've noticed some other weird tricks Godard employs often. Some are obvious (the title screens), but some are a bit weirder. I've noticed he often plays with the sound in his films, more than any director I can think of. He won't simply let a track drone on.. it's odd. Take that scene in Weekend where there is a long story about eggshells and cum and dog bowls and all that weird shit. The most suspensful, abrasive, weird music will play at random times, out of nowhere. What was up with that? In fact, that whole movie is so purposely abrasive as to be ridiculous. Maybe that's why I love it. A FILM FOUND IN A TRASH DUMP. THE END OF CINEMA. Haha. Also, he often incorporates brilliant silence into his movies.

I found out recently Godard has 94 films.

90 fucking 4.

Strangely, almost the entire focus on him is films he made at the beginning of his career. I'll admit, I haven't seen anything past a certain point yet, but some of it is hard to find! I have shit like "For Ever MOZART" and "Detective" in my netflix queue. Very curious...

Why why why must Godard fans be "film snobs"?, goddammit......I hate that notion, that cliche......

I've immersed myself in Godard over the last year.

-his later works are criminally overlooked.
-my fav is Pierrot Le Fou.
-but Notre Musique, Detective, and Helas Pour Moi are right up there for me.
-Godard may confound, repel, disgust, infuriate......but he will never bore.
-there is so much more for me to discover. Thank you for this thread. I'll now read it carefully.

I forgot that I posted earlier in this thread, LOL.

I LOVE all the Star Trek next gen series, I really can't choose one episode.. and all the movies were just as good.. he really is the best captain.

o wait.

Your avatar defies this.

I am a girl of many tastes..

I cant wait to see his later stuff! I've seen almost everything up to week-end and i now have everything after that in my netflix.

1. Pierrot Le Fou
2. Weekend
3. Oh, Woe Is Me
4. Notre Musique
5. Breathless
6. Tout Va Bien
7. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
8. In Praise of Love
9. Contempt
10. Detective

something like that.

I like almost all his stuff.

WARNING! SPAM ALERT:

I'm selling three Godard DVDs (In Praise of Love 2001, Soigne Ta Droite! 1987, My Life to Live (Facets edition)) and three Godard VHSs (Numero Deux 1975, Comment Ca Va? 1976, La Gai Savoir 1968).

All are ex-library copies, so they have annoying stickers here and there, but all have been used rarely and are in pretty good shape. PM for details.

(Also have a small Heidegger collection for sale)

A bout de souffle! Most definetly.

it's good to see so many people have seen le weekend. he's making a new film at the moment in which alain badiou will give a lecture in an empty cruise ship apparently. this gives hope that he has revised his previous opinion that cinema can no longer improve humanity. i've always been curious as to why he said that. was it an attempt to rid himself of artistic obsessions because of at the time he felt direct political action was what was needed and art was too much of an indulgence or was it just a reactionary cynical comment? i haven't read enough about it but i do know that at one point he gave up film all together to concentrate on politics.