I have gottten through the first hundred pages of Richard Brody's book Everything is Cinema about Jean Luc Godard. So far it is a great read. I should expect nothing less from a writer from the New Yorker which is so reputedly intelligent I should be in awe of every page. I find the parts about the film to inform my watching of the film much more involved and less prone to over analysis which I'm prone to. I watched Breathless and some of the extras on the Criterion disc which I wrote about in another blog post.
I didn't watch Godard's firt post-Breathless film Le Petit Soldat. It has a very interesting back story. The film was banned in France and Godard was under duress of deportation if he released the film outside of France. Godard is a Swiss National, so he had little leverage in what he could do about releasing a film that was graphic in it's depictions of torture on both sides of the Algerian War. I will watch the film, eventually. I really want to see what all the fuss is about.
Godard's second post-Breathless film came at a turning point in the History of the Nouvelle Vague. Many critics at the time had hailed that the New Wave had crested and lost it's force. Truffaut's second film Shoot the Piano Player didn't fair well and other New Wave filmmakers were not doing any better. Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and others did films that didn't fair well commercially. Jacques Demy and Claire Denis and others weren't considered true New Wave filmmakers because they didn't come from the Cahiers du Cinema background or the Cinemathaque in Paris. So the New Wave was bombing at the box office and critically was becoming fractured.
One of the most interesting points the book talks about is Godard personal politics and his views towards the Cinema. Godard and other New Wave filmmakers were caught in a trap. They saw the traditional French left as too doctrinaire and saw the French right as too much against new art. Godard proposed that the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers would create a new Left which would make new art and change French politics.
For all it's grandeur and talk of new art and changing French politics how much it really did change Cinema and French politics I will have to keep reading.
The film was subpar. It tries to be too much. Like Brody says it combines musical with comedy that isn't really either one. Some of the music numbers are entertaining. The dialogue between Belmondo, Brialy, and Karina is good, but not that memorable. Brody also said that Karina was viewed as an unpolished actress and I agree with him.
It does have a Nouvelle Vague sensibilty about it which I like a lot. The shots, the really quick edits, some of the music, and Belmondo, who plays a secondary role to Brialy, make the film enjoyable. Yet much of the film is about boring, domestic life, much of which is based on Godard and Karina's life together. It's cute when they put books together to say things to each other. There are little moments like these that are portrayed so lovingly you get the impression of how much Godard really loved Karina
It is too bad that after this great send up of Karina by Godard that she miscarried and later on left him for another director which she broke up with and attempted suicide. I haven't read further in the book so I don't know what happened after the attempt of suicide.
As a filmmaker I really admire those little, simple, detailed shots of a couple's personal life. Those little joys must have meant so much to JLG to put on screen with such loving care. They are tender moments, funny and devoid of vulgarity. When I'm trying to write a scene I find it so difficult to portray those little moments that make life not just livable, but filled with love. The stripteases and referrences to fascists are not. Those got JLG into hotter water than he already was, but that's more about his politics which could be the subject of another blog post.
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