The Art of the Movie Poster: Jean Luc-Godard's Alphaville

M.I.A. on Region 1 DVD Tribute Month (Film 19) Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mepris (Contempt)

Jean-Luc Godard's Top Ten Lists

Anyone who has Godard On Godard will have seen these before but I just noticed they were online so here is a link to the top ten lists Jean-Luc Godard submitted to Cahiers du Cinema throughout the sixties.
I haven't yet been able to locate Godard actually writing on Dishonored, my overlooked classic of the week, but if you scroll down on this link you can see where he named it the 10th greatest American sound film ever made on a list from December of 1963.
I always really enjoy looking at these lists to remind myself of how many great American films there are that rarely get mentioned anymore and how important classic Hollywood was to Godard in the early part of his career. Some of my favorite choices that pop up on some of lists that might prove surprising are Joshua Logan's Bus Stop (1956), Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957), Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce (1963), Howard Hawks Man's Favorite Sport (1964, and Robert Mulligan's Love With The Proper Stranger (1964). All wonderful American films that are so often ignored...also the fact that Godard ranks Man's Favorite Sport above Antonioni's Red Desert on the 1964 list always reminds of what a complete bad ass he is...give the lists a look if you haven't seen them. They are fascinating.

Jean-Luc Godard Is 77 Today

Today is Jean-Luc Godard's birthday. I love Godard...I absolutely adore him. He was the first French director I ever really fell in love with, and his films have led me to so many other directors and for that I will always be grateful. As I get older I find myself gravitating more and more towards his peers like Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette but Godard will always be the man...he will always be the one who first made me question what cinema was, and the one who in film after film gave me the answer. So for his birthday here are a few things I love about Jean-Luc Godard.

I love your early black and white pictures like BREATHLESS, MY LIFE TO LIVE and THE LITTLE SOLDIER. I love the grain, the shadows and the way you seem to be reinventing the cinema you had loved so much as a youth in every frame.

I love those early eye popping color features and the way you photographed Anna Karina and Brigitte Bardot in them. Films like A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, PIERROT LE FOU and COMTEMPT are among the most beautiful and trans-formative films ever made. I feel changed every time I watch them.

I love when you got more and more political, nasty and angry...that two or three year period just before you announced the 'end of cinema' during those closing credits of WEEKEND when you made TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and MADE IN U.S.A. You were like a beautifully bruised punk poet scraping together the last cinematic evidence of a period that would quickly be over.

I love your difficult video productions of the seventies, and think that many of your greatest work can be found in these pieces. Films like NUMBER TWO continue to haunt and invigorate anyone lucky to come across out of print copies of them.

I especially love your '68 Comeback' as it was in 1980 with SLOW MOTION, possibly your greatest and most undervalued work. I love the films after as well like DETECTIVE and FIRST NAME CARMEN where you re-embraced film as your true love, but you didn't let go of the rage you found in the seventies.

I love you as the self described aging Swiss business man of the past twenty years still capable of transforming film into your own specific medium. I love that I can still feel you deconstructing and rebuilding this art form that you alone seem to totally grasp.

I love that you probably wouldn't give a damn what I love...

So happy birthday to one particular aging Swiss business man who at 77 is still changing lives and sticking it to the man as I type this. Here's to many more years of GODard...no one else has ever come close.

Criterion Announces One Of The Big Ones

After years of rumors it looks like Criterion are finally going to release a deluxe set of Jean-Luc Godard's masterful first feature A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (BREATHLESS). This most welcome news is being reported at Mobius and the information is probably at Criterion's web site also.
Godard's seminal film stars two of cinemas greatest icons, Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg and is without question one of the most important films ever made. The two disc set is said to contain the following special features and will be out later this year.

....
New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard

Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville

New video interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker

New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport's "Jean Seberg" and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Breathless as Film Criticism"

Chambre 12, Hotel de suede, an eighty-minute French documentary about the making of Breathless, with members of the cast and crew

Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo

French theatrical trailer

New and improved English subtitle translation

PLUS: A booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, Francois Truffaut's original film treatment, and Godard's scenario.
....

Criterion's other Godard sets have ranged from very good to spectacular so I am extremely happy to get this news. Now if they would just get rolling on Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, I will be one happy film lover.

Godard's Une Femme Est Une Femme

While I have a great admiration for Jean-Luc Godard's post WEEKEND films I have to admit that my favorites still remain his early work from the period of 59-66. His 1961 film UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME (A WOMAN IS A WOMAN) is one his greatest and most endearing works. A comedy and musical the way that only Godard could have created, UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME succeeds so incredibly well due in no small part to the cast Godard assembled for it.

Watching Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy together in this film is like watching some sort of awe inspiring mystical event. There is something magical about how well these three work together, and in how much Godard's camera loves them. UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME sometimes is considered lesser Godard but to me it is one of the films that symbolizes the inventiveness and importance of the French New Wave the best.
Photographed in eye-popping color by Raoul Coutard and set to the lovely music of Michel Legrand, UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME is one of the most beautiful films Godard ever shot. The recent Criterion disc of it brings out all of the amzing colors and Godard's meticulous widescreen framing beautifully. For years this film was an eyesore in it's home video incarnations but the Criterion dvd is splendid and a must for all film fans.
There is an overload of Godard studies by people much more qualified than I and this film has certainly been picked apart nearly to death so I won't attempt to do it again here. I will just say that watching the three of these actors in this film reminds me of why I fell in love with cinema in the first place. I can still recall the overwhelming feeling this movie gave me the first time I saw it as a teenager. It's one of a handful of films that really changed the way I watched and appreciated films.
Godard's first color film remains, over 45 years after its release, one of the reasons God didn't make the world in black and white.

Artist and Muse #15

Despite my love for the remake, Godard's original BREATHLESS remains peerless. It is a glorious reminder of the limitless possibilities of cinema and one of the greatest debut films of all time. Here is Godard directing his legendary stars, Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Overlooked Classics: Breathless

We live in a remake crazed world right now where apparently no classic film is safe. I am fully expecting ROSEMARY BABY and EXORCIST remakes to be announced any time now. However it's easy to forget that the cinema world has always been a little remake and recycling crazy. Often the results are horrendous and insulting to the original, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, while some play like well meaning tributes, DAWN OF THE DEAD and occasionally some are absolutely inspired, SOLARIS. In the wake of the release of the remake of one of the most legendary horror films, HALLOWEEN, I thought I would pay tribute to an even more audacious remake from almost 25 years ago.
I'm sure critics and film buffs in 1982 were positively flabbergasted when Jim Mcbride announced that he was going to remake Jean-Luc Godard's incredibly influential BREATHLESS. Working with L.M. Kit Carson and Michael Mann, Mcbride began work on his BOUT DE SOUFELL script based on Truffaut and Godard's original probably with the full knowledge of how outraged many of the film community were going to be. For French film fans it was the equivalent of re-making CITIZEN KANE.
Mcbride and Carson made their first collaboration with 1967's fascinating mock documentary, DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY. Mcbride would follow that film with the slightly more straightforward MY GIRLFRIEND'S WEDDING in 69. His first narrative feature was the little scene, and rather controversial, GLEN AND RANDA in 1971 which was followed in 1974 by the farcical sexploitation title HOT TIMES.
I don't know a lot about McBride so I can't say how he spent his time between 1974 and 1982. But his early self reflexive documentary work shows him as obviously influenced by Godard and the French New Wave, so there could have been more shocking choices for people to direct a BREATHLESS remake.

The American BREATHLESS stars Richard Gere as the comic book loving, rockabilly obsessed dreamer and small time thief Jesse Lujak. Gere's Lujak is like a dangerous speedball shot of all ego and sex in BREATHLESS. His portrayal is one of the most charismatically narcissistic in American cinema, as the film is filled with shots of him staring into mirrors, dancing by himself, strutting and at times it looks like Gere could literally explode. I love the performance and the remake of BREATHLESS absolutely hinges on it. It's a performance that is probably more difficult to love than hate but there are few that I think to compare it to. Love it or hate it, Richard Gere's Jesse Lujack is undeniably unique.
Gere is of course playing the incredibly iconic Jean Paul Belmondo's role, only McBride had the clever idea of switching him from French to American and then taking the female lead and changing her from American to French. While Godard's stylish film was a French tribute to the low budget American gangster films of the 30's and 40's, Mcbride's remake is a colorful American tribute to the French New Wave.
Filling in for the untouchable Jean Seberg is young French actress Valerie Kaprisky. The lovely Kaprisky took a lot of flack for this role but it's worth mentioning that this was one of her first films and that she barely spoke English. I think she redeems herself quite nicely in the part as the young, naive French student. No less than the great Polish director Andrzej Zulawski was impressed enough to cast her a year later in his sublimely over the top THE PUBLIC WOMAN.

Mcbride's BREATHLESS plays like a compulsive and flashy pop art piece, one that you stare at for awhile trying to figure out whether or not it is actually art or just something hanging on the wall. With it's whirlwind pace, Jack Nitzsche score and stunning splashes of sun stroked Los Angeles color, BREATHLESS is undeniably fun and exciting.
Mcbride's is in powerful command of the medium in this film and his camera rarely sits still, at times it seems like it has had some of the same speed Lujack has been popping but it never feels out of control, or under-prepared. Richard Kline helps give the film it's distinct look and the script is loaded with enough snappy dialogue to make it still feel fresh.

Mcbride's film plays pretty close to Godard's plot wise and ends with the same tragi-comic ending that the original had. Mcbride also crams his film full of references to past films, books and music signalling the remake of BREATHLESS as a clear precursor to 90's cinema and specifically Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has actually called Mcbride's film a favorite and it is, perhaps much more than most of the films typically mentioned as influencing him, a clear kickoff to Tarantino's reference filled world.
The remake of BREATHLESS polarized most critics upon it's release and was only a minor success at the box office. It signalled the end of part one of Gere's always brave and occasionally inspiring career. He has never been quite this psychotically good again in a role, which isn't discrediting his later work (much of it very fine), but he was became a different actor after Jesse Lujack. Perhaps because Lujack was the obvious end to the particular road he had carved for himself, as an actor, starting with his crazed turn in LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR. Where else could Gere go after playing a character literally singing and dancing in the street to celebrate his final moments before getting gunned down?

1983's BREATHLESS makes a lot more sense now than it did 24 years ago. Not at all dated, it now plays as one of the most progressive and seminal films of the 1980s. Unfortunately Mcbride's career since has been frustrating with only the neo-noir , THE BIG EASY, giving hint to his obvious great talents.

One of my favorite postscripts to the remake of BREATHLESS is Luc Besson's 1985 film SUBWAY. Early on we have Besson matching nearly shot for shot a scene, featuring Christopher Lambert stealing a car, from BREATHLESS. This shouldn't have been a surprise as Besson was one of the clear leaders of France's '2nd New Wave' but the shocking thing was that the shot wasn't copied from Godard and Belmondo, but McBride and Gere. It was Besson's sly wink to a sadly underrated and mostly forgotten American film.

The remake of BREATHLESS is currently available on a disappointing full screen dvd from MGM with no extras. The best way to see the film is courtesy of the out of print laserdisc from the mid 90's that had a sharp widescreen presentation and a beautiful sleeve picturing Gere's manic, lost and completely unforgettable loser.

Here are two interesting links. One is to Roger Eberts original negative but at times insightful review and the other is Vincent Canby's original take on it. I think these reviews are interesting in that they show some of the attitudes at the very idea or remaking Godard's film and also for the fact that they almost like it.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19830513/REVIEWS/305130301/1023

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=9E03EED81138F930A25756C0A965948260

also a link highlighting Tarantino on his favorite films, which include Mcbride's BREATHLESS.

http://www.tarantino.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=380&Itemid=41