|
| |
Cinematic period
The first and most celebrated period roughly spanned from his first feature,
Breathless (1960), through to Week End (1967) and focused on narrative and
somewhat conventional works that often refer to different aspects of film
history. This cinematic period stands in contrast to the revolutionary period
that immediately followed it, during which Godard ideologically denounced much
of cinema’s history as "bourgeois" and therefore without merit.
Films
Godard's first major feature film, Breathless (1960), starring Jean-Paul
Belmondo and Jean Seberg, was a seminal work of the French New Wave. It was a
key determiner of the French New Wave's style, and incorporated quotations from
several elements of popular culture — specifically American cinema. The distinct
style of the film manifested in its numerous jump cuts, use of real locations
rather than sets, and freedom from movie convention with character asides and
broken eyeline matches. François Truffaut, who co-wrote Breathless with Godard,
suggested its concept and introduced Godard to the producer who ultimately
funded it, Georges de Beauregard.
The same year, Godard made Le Petit Soldat, which dealt with the Algerian War of
Independence. Most notably, it was the first collaboration between Godard and
Danish-born actress Anna Karina, whom he later married in 1961 (and divorced in
1967). The film, due to its political nature, was banned from French theaters
until 1963. Karina appeared again, along with Belmondo, in A Woman Is a Woman
(1961), which was in many ways an homage to the American musical. Karina desires
a child, prompting her to leave her boyfriend, played by actor Jean-Claude
Brialy, and seek out his best friend (Belmondo) as its father.
Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live)Godard's next
film, Vivre sa vie (1962), was one of his most popular among critics. Karina
starred as Nana, a mother and aspiring actress whose poor circumstances lead her
to the life of a streetwalker. It is an episodic account of her trials. The
film's style, much like that of Breathless, boasted the type of experimentation
that made the French New Wave so influential.
Les Carabiniers (1963) was about the horror of war and its inherent injustice.
It was the influence and suggestion of Roberto Rossellini that led Godard to
make the film. It follows two peasants who join the army of a king, only to find
futility in the whole thing as the king reveals the deception of
war-administrating leaders.
Jack Palance hurls a film canister in Contempt.His most commercially successful
film was Contempt (1963), starring Michel Piccoli and one of France's biggest
female stars, Brigitte Bardot. A coproduction between Italy and France, Contempt
became known as a pinnacle in cinematic modernism with its profound reflexivity.
The film follows Paul (Piccoli), a screenwriter who is commissioned by the
arrogant American movie producer Prokosch (Jack Palance) to rewrite the script
for an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, which German director Fritz Lang has
been filming. Lang's "high culture" interpretation of the story is lost on
Prokosch, whose character is a firm indictment of the commercial motion picture
hierarchy. Another prominent theme is the inability to reconcile love and labor,
which is illustrated by Paul's crumbling marriage to Camille (Bardot) during the
course of shooting.
In 1964, Godard and Karina formed a production company, Anouchka Films. He
directed Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), another collaboration between the two
and described by Godard as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka." It follows
two young men, looking to score on a heist, who both fall in love with Karina,
and quotes from several gangster film conventions.
Une femme mariée (1964) followed Band of Outsiders. Godard made the film while
he acquired funding for Pierrot le fou (1965). It was a slow, deliberate,
toned-down black and white picture without a real story. The film was entirely
produced over the period of one month and exhibited a loose quality unique to
Godard.
In 1965, Godard directed Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, a
futuristic blend of science fiction, film noir, and satire. Eddie Constantine
starred as Lemmy Caution, a detective who is sent into a city controlled by a
giant computer named Alpha 60. His mission is to make contact with Professor von
Braun (Howard Vernon), a famous scientist who has fallen mysteriously silent,
and is believed to be suppressed by the computer. Later on in the movie, Lemmy
Caution discovers that the scientist designed and implemented Alpha 60.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina in Pierrot le fou.Pierrot le fou (1965) was
one of his most cinematic pictures in terms of its complex storyline,
distinctive personalities, and apocalyptic ending. Gilles Jacob, an author,
critic, and president of the Cannes Film Festival, called it both a
"retrospective" and recapitulation in the way it played on so many of Godard’s
earlier characters and themes. With an extensive cast and variety of locations,
the film was expensive enough to warrant significant problems with funding. Shot
in color, it departed from Godard’s usual black and white minimalist works
(typified by Breathless, Vivre sa vie, and Une femme mariée). He solicited the
participation of Jean-Paul Belmondo, by then a famous actor, in order to
guarantee the necessary amount of capital.
Masculin, féminin (1966), based on two Guy de Maupassant stories, La Femme de
Paul and Le Signe, was a study of contemporary French youth and their
involvement with cultural politics. An intertitle refers to the characters as
"The children of Marx and Coca-Cola."
Godard followed with Made in U.S.A (1966), whose source material was Richard
Stark's The Jugger; and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), in which
Marina Vlady portrays a woman leading a double life as housewife and prostitute.
La Chinoise (1967) saw Godard at his most politically forthright yet. The film
focused on a group of students and engaged with the ideas coming out of the
student activist groups in contemporary France. Released just before the May
1968 events, the film is thought to foreshadow the student rebellions that took
place.
That same year, Godard made a more colorful and political film, Week End. It
follows a Parisian couple as they leave on a weekend trip across the French
countryside to collect an inheritance. What ensues is a confrontation with the
tragic flaws of the over-consuming bourgeoisie. The film contains some of the
most written-about scenes in cinema's history. One of them, a ten-minute
tracking shot of the couple stuck in an unremitting traffic jam as they leave
the city, is often cited as a new technique Godard used to deconstruct bourgeois
trends. Week End's enigmatic and audacious end title sequence, which reads "End
of Cinema," appropriately marked an end to the narrative and cinematic period in
Godard's filmmaking career.
| |
|
