May 12, 2018
"If I said that phrase back then, quite some time ago, it was in a way to counter the Spielbergs and that lot who said a story had to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and so, as a joke, I said: 'not in that order.'"
Said Jean-Luc Godard, confronted with his old statement that films should not follow a conventional narrative arc, quoted in "Godard injects anarchic spirit at Cannes with small screen cameo." The 87-year-old filmmaker appeared via Facetime to promote his new movie "The Image Book," which is a collection of "clips from other films, stills, news footage and even Islamic State online videos, with a soundtrack often at odds with the images."
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27 comments:
Cacophony with interleaved cognitive dissonance is progressive. It's the very model of social intelligentsia and leadership.
Pulp Fiction, Memento, and every David Lynch film I can think of.
The auteurs' auteur. Should have stuck to writing.
Gertrude Stein has been quoted as saying pretty much the same thing about beginning, middle and end. I can believe that she and then Uncle Jean came up with this notion or joke independently.
Read the blind items at "Crazy Days, Crazy Nights" if you want to know about the Hollywood and media scandals before they happen.
Is he only 87? He hasn't made a good movie in decades. Many decades.
Actor Crispin Glover star of "Back to Future" goes on the record to accuse Spielberg of pedophilia. This is simply another case where everyone knew about it but kept quiet to protect their jobs.
He filmed the Stones in the studio as the worked to hammer out "Sympathy for the Devil". It's interesting to listen as the song evolves from a pizza parlor calliope into syncopated voodoo.
Sorry, I've seen it on youtube, but I couldn't find the link.
"Westworld" is not temporally sequential.
Bits of it, in each episode, occur at different points on the timeline, and its up to the viewer to figure out what time it is on what segment.
My wife calls it Confusingworld.
madAsHell said...He filmed the Stones in the studio as the worked to hammer out "Sympathy for the Devil".
I first saw it at a theater in 197x, and people screamed and threw stuff at the screen when this crap came on:
"Interwoven through the movie are outdoor shots of Black Panthers milling about in a junkyard littered with rusting cars heaped upon each other. They read from revolutionary texts ...
The rest of the film contains a political message in the form of a voiceover about Marxism, the need for revolution..."
I removed all that from my own copy.
"Running time: 110 minutes" -> 41 minutes.
"Beginning, middle, end" goes all the way back to Aristotle, and probably beyond. Artists play around with the convention, and sometimes mix it up with varying levels of success, but the old Greek is still right.
Godard was inspired by Jerry Lewis. The car pile up in WEEK-END was one bit of business Jon Luc replicated from a Lewis film.
Whatever happened to in medias res?
Great stuff, Michael McNeil.
I loved all the early Goddard movies when I was an undergrad. They were anarchic and fun and seemed intellectually demanding but I was young and enthralled by how French and sophisticated they seemed. But then Anna Karina left him and he turned to Marx and Mao and revealed the emptiness of his vision. He never recovered. Losing one’s muse is fatal if that’s all you’ve got.
Sorry, Godard, one d.
Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a company that sent me again and again to Burlington, VT, for week long technical training sessions. In the winter. For Six Sigma certification (remember that?) The training days were broken down into 45 minute mini-classes, with 15 minute breaks and a lunch hour.
During the 15 minute breaks I usually went up to my room and did emails and other work stuff, with the TV on, for about 5 or 10 minutes before heading back to the conference room for the next 45 minute session.
HBO was playing Fifth Element at the time. And I saw the movie, over a period of weeks and weeks, in 5 to 10 minute pieces sequenced quite randomly. Eventually I saw the whole movie, in short pieces, with the scenes completely out of order. It was fun.
But having experienced it like that, the first time I saw Fifth Element all the way from beginning to end, in correct sequence, I enjoyed it even more because I knew plot details that the characters on screen did not, and could enjoy the anticipation of watching the characters experience the next scene, and the next....
When I was a kid, any James Bond movie on one of the three channels as the Sunday movie was license to stay up until 11:00pm. Now, whenever Fifth Element appears on TV I have an excuse to watch it - but while doing something else - to enjoy every once in a while the fun part of a scene or an odd bit of dialogue. The whole is greater than the parts, but the parts stand well each unto itself.
"Running time: 110 minutes" -> 41 minutes.
I did not know that! I've only seen some version of your 41 minute copy with the Stones in the studio. I really didn't start listening to the Stones until their 1976 visit to Seattle. This was well after "Sympathy for the Devil".
Caldwell Titcomb IV
Hey, I used to be acquainted with an Alfred E. Newman. Any relation?
None of the New Wave Directors, as far as I know anway, have had a "MeToo" moment. In comparison to our trusted newscasters, you'd think they would be more aggressive in their pursuit of sexual fulfillment and disregard for bourgeois values. Maybe this is not because of good behavior on their part, but because French women are more tolerant of the odd grope, proposition or fanny pinch......Does feminism come under the banner of bourgeois values or is feminismin opposition to such values? It's hard to keep up.
Godard - another fucking left-wing 60s fraud. Mercifully, most have forgotten that all the film critics and "intellectuals" were gaga over his "great" films.
Ray Bradbury got so sick of the hype he wrote Godard was a "5 chocolate bar" guy. That is, you left the movie - went to the lobby - and got a chocolate bar - 5 different times.
madAsHell said...
""Running time: 110 minutes" -> 41 minutes.""
I've only seen some version of your 41 minute copy with the Stones in the studio.
I guess someone else had the same idea, which isn't surprising.
I really didn't start listening to the Stones until their 1976 visit to Seattle.
That's too bad, they kinda sucked after Mick Taylor left, but kicked ass before that.
Hey, I used to be acquainted with an Alfred E. Newman. Any relation?
Alfred and I have Williams Syndrome. (There used to be a picture of a Williams Syndrome guy who could pass as Alfred's brother)
Alfred E. and his bro.
To be honest, you look more like Chucky.
The power of Steven Spielberg can not be overstated. Even and obscure and unimportant blog like this one is so scared of him that they have delete mentions of his preferences. Here is a link to Crazy Days, Crazy Nights which outlines this in an blind item. Maybe that will pass Meade's censorship.
Everybody knows about it. By deleting mentions of this you enable his behavior. It is all going to come out. It always does. It might be after he dies. But this fear is most unbecoming and shows what you are all about.
Just know that the feminism and the concern for sexual abuse victims is all a bunch of bullshit.
With all due respect, Jean-Luc, it's not like you invented nonlinear narrative. See, there was this little film about twenty years before you arrived by a guy named Orson Welles, and books by a guy named Joyce and some chick named Brontë . . .
Godard's "King Lear" might be the worst movie ever.
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