Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (123 page)

Andrew Mendelsohn was there when this all got started.

When the book was in its Starbucks phase, Carl Titolo nourished it with old-school wisdom and creative faith. His unflagging sense of purpose and artistic dedication are an inspiration.

Jasenka Redzić provided peace of mind and all the time that was needed. My sister, Jane Brody, has been a stead fast source of confidence and encouragement through the years, even when it was least justified; so were our late parents, Bernard and Carol Brody.

My darling daughters, Juliette and Louise, grew along with the book, and endured my absences, distractions, sleepless nights, and sleepy mornings. I hope they’ll think it’s all worth it. They never cease to amaze, delight, and inspire me; they have opened my world to wondrous new dimensions.

My beloved wife, Maja Nikolić, has changed my life, expanded my horizons, made me more than I could imagine, made possible more than I dared to dream. I dedicate this book to her.

NOTES

G par G
refers to
Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard
, Alain Bergala, ed. (Paris:
Cahiers du Cinéma
, 1998).

CS refers to the clipping files of the Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne.

Preface

1. Susan Sontag,
Styles of Radical Will
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), p. 150.

2.
Paris Match
, March 9, 1968.

Chapter One: “We do not think, we are thought”

1
.
La Gazette du cinéma
, September 1950.

2
. Au cinéma, nous ne pensons pas, nous sommes pensés.

3
. Thomas Edison’s movies were first shown publicly in 1894; the Lumière brothers first displayed their work to a paying audience in 1895. However, Edison’s work remained at the level of mere recording, whereas the Lumière brothers’ efforts reflected the concepts and choices of works of art.

4
. Godard withdrew his authorization when MacCabe was seven years into his project; the resulting book features generous views of young Godard’s family life.

5
. Jean-Pierre Laubscher, interview by author, February 21, 2003.

6
. Papers of Jean-Pierre Laubscher.

7
.
Lire
, May 1997.

8
.
Télérama
, October 4, 2000.

9
.
Le Nouvel Observateur
, February 1, 1985.

10
.
Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma
, p. 59;
Le Monde de l’Education
, November 1997; in
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 443.

11
.
L’Autre Journal
no. 2, January 1985, in
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 599–600.

12
.
Studio
, May 2001.

13
. Gilles Perrault,
Paris sous l’Occupation
, pp.152–53; cited in clicnet.swarthmore.edu/aobajtek/ultras_litt.html.

14
.
Studio
, May 2001;
Télérama
, October 4, 2000.

15
.
Studio
, May 2001.

16
.
Libération
, December 3, 1996.

17
.
Lire
, May 1997.

18
. Roland Tolmatchoff, interview by author, March 20, 2002.

19
. Godard would later borrow Parvulesco’s name for a character in a film, and Eric Rohmer would—in 1995—cast Parvulesco himself in a role.

20
.
Paris-Match
, March 25, 1961.

21
.
Télérama
, July 8, 1978.

22
. G. P. Langlois and G. Myrent,
Henri Langlois
(Paris: Denoàël, 1986), p. 175.

23
.
Sartre
, a film by Alexandre Astruc and Michel Contat (text published by Gallimard, 1977).

24
. “La Fin de la guerre,”
Les Temps Modernes
, October 1945; in
Situations, III
, p. 65.

25
. De Gaulle had suspected that Blum, a Jew who had survived Buchenwald and other German concentration camps, would be able to make a special appeal to the Jewish financiers of Wall Street.

26
. Despite the accord’s apparent disadvantage for the French film industry—as noted at once by industry representatives—it was issued apart from the main accord because the latter was subject to Congressional approval, and Byrnes assumed that Congress would never approve a bill that placed any limit at all on the export of American films.

27
.
Le Monde
, June 16–17, 1946.

28
.
L’Humanité
, June 8, 1946.

29
.
L’Humanité
, June 16, 1946.

30
. The new constitution took effect on October 24, 1946.

31
.
L’Humanité
, October 11, 1947.

32
.
La Revue du cinéma
, January 1947, in Antoine de Baecque,
La Cinéphile
(Paris: Fayard, 2003).

33
. “Quand Hollywood se met à penser,” trans. Dana Polan, in
Post Script
, vol. 7 no. 1, Fall 1987, as “Citizen Kane.”

34
.
Les Temps Modernes
, February 1947.

35
. André Bazin did not hesitate to write, late in 1943, “I will perhaps shock some readers by asserting that of all French artistic activities since the war the cinema is the only one that is progressing.”

36
. André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in
What is Cinema?
vol. 1, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).

37
.
La Revue du cinéma
, June 1948, in Rohmer,
Le Goût de la beauté
(Paris: Etoile, 1984).

38
.
Le Temps Modernes
, September 1948.

39
. Ibid., June 1949.

40
.
Télérama
, July 8, 1978.

41
.
Les Inrockuptibles
, June 5, 1996.

42
. Richard Roud, A
Passion for Films
(
New York: Viking, 1983
)
, p. 68.

43
. Ibid., p.67.

44
. Huguette Marquand Ferreux,
Musée du Cinéma Henri Langois
(Paris: Moeght/Cinémathèque Française, 1991).

45
. In a later article, from 1952, Godard characterized the film as “anti-cinema.”
Cahiers du cinéma
, September 1952, in
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 84.

46
. Hélène Frappat,
Jacques Rivette, secret compris
(Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2001), p. 55.

47
. Anne-Marie Cazalis,
Mémoires d’une Anne
, Paris: Stock, 1976, p 95. 16mm film was the amateur format, which was not controlled by government or union strictures.

48
. Alexandre Astruc,
Le Montreur d’ombres
(Etrepilly: Bartillat, 1996).

49
.
Jean-Luc Godard ou le cinéma au défi
, directed by Hubert Knapp (French television, 1964).

50
.
Réalités
, January 1964.

51
.
Art Press, Spécial Godard
, December 1984 and January–February 1985.

52
. Suzanne Schiffman was then known by her maiden name, Suzanne Klochendler.

53
.
Lire
, May 1997.

54
. Suzanne Schiffman, videotaped interview by Bernard Cohn, September 15, 1999.

55
.
Lire
, May 1997.

56
. That is, it was the equivalent of slide film: there was no negative and no print, and the film on which the images were recorded was edited and projected.

57
. Jacques Rivette, interview by author, March 11, 2002.

58
. Laubscher, interview by author, February 21, 2003.

59
. Schiffman, videotaped interview by Bernard Cohn, September 27, 1999.

60
. Rivette, interview by author, March 11, 2002.

61
. Greil Marcus,
Lipstick Traces
(Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1990).

62
. Mourre soon wrote a book,
Malgré la blasphème
(Despite the Blasphemy), to this effect. He subsequently made his living as a lay writer of Catholic treatises.

63
. François Truffaut, Correspondence, 1945–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), p. 24.

64
. Claude Chabrol,
Et pourtant je tourne…
, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976, p. 86.

65
. Charles Bitsch, interview by author, September 19, 2001. On Christmas Eve 1983, when Gégauff and his second wife were together alone in a cabin in rural Norway, she stabbed him to death.

66
. Momo: short for Maurice, as in Schérer, whose friends also called him “Le Grand Momo”—Big Momo, or Momo the Great, both in reference to his height, his seniority, and his seigneurial grandeur. He is tall, but he was also very much of a grandee among his younger acolytes.

67
.
Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suede
, a documentary film by Claude Ventura and Xavier Villetard, in Criterion DVD set of
Breathless
(2007).

68
.
Le Journal du cinéma
, broadcast December 13, 1970 (DVD
Claire’s Knee
, Criterion, 2006).

69
. Rivette, interview by author, September 11, 2001.

70
. The cancellation itself then became the occasion of another odd stunt: a speaker addressed the crowd, which was assembled to see the film nonetheless. To announce its cancellation, the speaker declared that the version of the film delivered was, erroneously, the British remake, which was both philo-Semitic and a very bad film, and therefore did not merit screening.

71
.
Le Monde
, October 14, 1950. In November, after further legislative debate, the minister explained apologetically that the screenings were protected by freedom of the press, and added, “In the current state of the law, apology for collaboration cannot be the object of any judicial pursuit.”
Le Monde
, November 4, 1950.

Chapter Two: “A matter of loving or dying”

1
. There was also a special issue published in 1949.

2
. Tolmatchoff, interview by author, March 20, 2002.

3
. Colin MacCabe,
A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

4
. Tolmatchoff, interview by author, March 20, 2002.

5
.
Le Nouvel Observateur
, December 31, 1964–January 6, 1965.

6
. Bitsch, interview by author, September 19, 2001.

7
. Godard later said that Bazin didn’t consider the film “faithful to Maupassant.”
Télérama
, July 15, 1978. Indeed, in September 1952, Bazin reviewed another film,
Trois Femmes
, directed by André Michel, which, like
Le Plaisir
, was based on three stories by Maupassant; he stated that he considered Michel’s film to be a more faithful adaptation of Maupassant.

8
. “Découpage” means the sequence of shots in a film, the after-the-fact “storyboard.”

9
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, April 1951.

10
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, September 1952;
G par G
, vol. 1, pp. 80–84.

11
. It was held under the sponsorship of Jean Cocteau, who sought to avoid the group’s threatened disruption of the official event.

12
. C
onstruire
, no. 24, June 12, 2001. www.construire.ch.

13
. Laubscher, interview by author, February 21, 2003.

14
. Ibid.

15
. Tolmatchoff, interview by author, March 20, 2002.

16
. Laubscher, interview by author, February 21, 2002.

17
.
Schweizer Film Suisse
, July 7, 1955.

18
. Sometimes he was driven there by Tolmatchoff, in whose Opel with a broken windshield Godard would ride and freeze; Tolmatchoff recalled that Godard once thawed himself out by lying underneath the car and smearing himself with the warm oil that dripped from it.

19
. Actor Jean-Claude Brialy described Rohmer as “more or less the pope” of the young
Cahiers
critics (
Le Journal du cinéma
, broadcast December 13, 1970 (DVD
Claire’s Knee
, Criterion, 2006).

20
.
The Guardian
, December 4, 2001.

21
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, December 1984.

22
. Jean-Luc Godard, interview by author, June 2000.

23
. Fereydoun Hoveyda, interview by author, October 30, 2001.

24
. Michel Dorsday, telephone interview by author, May 21, 2001.

25
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, April 1957.

26
. Ibid.

27
. Ibid.

28
.
L’Humanité
, November 26, 1952, December 2–6, 1952.

29
. Michel Marie,
A bout de souffle
(Paris: Nathan, 1999), p. 30.

30
. Truffaut cited the example of Michelangelo Antonioni, who was at the same time denied permission to film in Paris a story about juvenile delinquency.

31
. The opening image that Truffaut conceived in his first scenario was the Eiffel Tower, seen from afar through a train window—and indeed the opening image of Truffaut’s first feature,
The 400 Blows
, was of the tower, but seen from close by, within Paris.

32
. Truffaut archives, BiFi.

33
. In the event, Becker’s next film,
Le Trou
, was released in 1960, and its unusual length made it impossible for it to be shown with a short film; by that time, however, Godard was already a feature-film director—and Becker had died.