Godard vs. Phil Patton: Weekend’s 69 Cars
Godard’s Weekend features a 7-minute scene of a traffic jam that is truly unforgettable.
Someone far crazier than me has compiled and identified not only all the cars in the 7-minute clip, but all the vehicles in the film, including Citroëns, Panhards, Facel Vegas, NSUs, Triumphs, and even a couple of tractors.
(There’s also two Volvos—a nice overlap with my typology project for Phil Patton—a 1967 Volvo 164 and a 1967 Volvo 1800 S).
Birthday
Paris Filmgrimage: Jean-Luc Godard & Agnes Varda, originally uploaded by Lady Vervaine.
Homage to Godard on la Rue Campagne-Première
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Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics by Colin MacCabe
Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics, originally uploaded by World of Good.
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Noticed: 2 or 3 Things
Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 1967
Experimental Jetset for Miltos Manetas, 2006
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Weekend’s Hypertext
Weekend (Week-end, in French), Jean-Luc Godard’s fragmented, brutal farce mocking the values of the French bourgeoisie unfolds through a series of intentionally disjointed set pieces. Throughout Weekend, Godard uses of intertitles (title cards that appear mid-film), and they enliven the film in a number of ways. More then simple chapter headings, Weekend’s intertitles add structure, and while some toy with its temporality. Many title serve as typographic voice, editorializing through coded, clever cultural references, enhancing the film’s bitter irony.
“A purely political film is difficult to do,” Godard wrote in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1965. “For politics you need insights into the points of view of four or five different people, and at the same time have a broad overall-grasp.” But two years later, Godard tackled politics not once, but twice in one year: La Chinoise, a film about France’s fervent political youth, “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” premiered in August 1967, and Weekend began production the same month, and was released in December 1967.
Weekend begins abruptly, without revealing its title immediately. Instead, the film proclaims itself “lost in the cosmos.”
Un Film Egaré Dans Le Cosmos
The plot, such as it is, centers on a chic, self-involved, Parisian couple, Corinne and Roland Durand (Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne), and their trip to Corinne’s family’s country home to secure her inheritance on the eve of her mother’s death. Conservations prior to the trip expose the characters’ chillingly immoral natures, as we overhear in the few minutes of the dialogue between Corinne and her lover: “Wouldn’t it be great when Roland drives your father home if both of them died in an accident?” [2] The lover then hands Corinne a drink, and the scene is interrupted by another title:
Un Film Trouvé à la Ferraille
A scrap heap of social morality, one supposes. It not the first time Godard has paralleled sexual infidelity and the emptiness of bourgeois values with social and political immorality. The conversation between Corinne and her lover continues, and Corinne reveals that she discouraged her husband from fixing the brakes on his car, hoping he’ll have a accident. As the sinister plans are revealed, so is the title:
Week End Week End Week End
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Close Up: Paul Éluard
Anna Karina, originally uploaded by sokaris73.
Capitale de La Douleur (The Capital Of Sorrow, 1926) is the best-known book of poetry by Paul Éluard, one of the founders of the French Surrealist movement. The title of an earlier book by Éluard —Mourir de ne pas Mourir (Dying Of Not Dying, 1924)—appears onscreen in small font on the back cover, which Natasha (Anna Karina) holds up while reading from it is another poetic parallel to the nightmarish existence in Alphaville:
Your voice, your eyes
your hands, your lips
Our silences, our words
Light that goes
light that returns
A single smile between us both
In quest of knowledge
I watched night create day
while we seemed unchanged
beloved of all, beloved of one alone
your mouth silently promised to be happy
Away, away, says hate
never, never, says love
A caress leads us from our childhood
Increasingly I see the human form
as a lover’s dialogue
The heart has but one mouth
Everything ordered by chance
All words without aforethought
Sentiments adrift
Men roam the city
A glance, a word
Because I love you
Everything moves
To live, only advance!
Aim straight for those you love
I went towards you, endlessly towards the light
If you smile, it is to enfold me all the better
The rays of your arms pierce the mist
An excellent essay by Michael Benedikt on the Éluard/Alphaville connection.
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“Made in USA” Trailer
Un Film Po
Un Film Poétique
Un Film Policier
Un Film Politique
A bit like Cassandre’s 1932 poster for the French apéritif:
Dubo
Dubon
Dubonnet!
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October 10th 6pm: Robert Storr lecture at the Met
Bande à part, originally uploaded by Cristo Bedoya.
A lecture by Robert Storr, Dean, Yale University School of Art.
When people speak of images in art they usually mean more or less recognizable pictures, but from the early modernists like Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró on down through Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, and Jenny Holzer, artists have chosen to represent reality and speak their minds with texts rather pictures. This talk will address the larger issues of that dramatic change through close examination of some of the most important “wordsmiths” in the visual arts.
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Insecurity
Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964), originally uploaded by ilookatyouwithfeelings.
Une Femme Mariée
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Fear of flying
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967), originally uploaded by puppetmister.
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