Godard’s Myth of Total Cinema: HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA
Written for the Rotterdam International Film Festival in November 2003. — J.R.
In his biography of André Bazin, Dudley Andrew notes in passing that “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and “The Myth of Total Cinema,” which he calls Bazin’s“first great essays,” were both composed during the French Occupation. I hope I can be forgiven for taking the meaning of the second essay’s title in a direction quite different from what Bazin intended–a direction inspired by the fact that we’re living today under a kind of Cultural Occupation imposed by advertising that currently approaches global dimensions, and which operates under the assumption of another kind of “myth of total cinema”. I’m thinking of the myth that the breadth and diversity of contemporary cinema in its present profusion are somehow knowable and therefore describable, something that can be analyzed in detail as well as evaluated.
A list of lists, the second in a series of six. –J.R. Chicago Reader, Best Films of the 1980s (chronological): Sans soleil (1981, Chris Marker) Blade Runner (1981, Ridley Scott) Passion (1982, Jean-Luc Godard) The King of Comedy (1983, Martin Scorsese) Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes) Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1984, Raul Ruiz) Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann) The Horse Thief (1985, Tian Zhuangzhuang) Mix-Up (1985, Francoise Romand) Mélo (1986, Alain Resnais) Brightness (1987, Souleymane Cisse) Housekeeping (1987, Bill Forsyth) A Story of the Wind (1988, Joris Ivens/Marceline Loridan) Distant Voices/Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies) Film Comment, 1981 (alphabetical): Chicago Reader, 1987 (ranked): Chicago Reader, 1988 (ranked): Chicago Reader, 1989 (ranked): [1/6/10] Read more This was originally published by the French film magazine Trafic in April 1997. (For a later commentary about episode 4a of Histoire(s) du cinéma, which focuses on Alfred Hitchcock, go here.) –J.R. Trailer for Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma The following text derives from two particular film festival encounters: (1) a roundtable on the subject of Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, held in Locarno in August 1995; (2) some time spent with Godard in Toronto in September 1996. I participated in the first event after having seen the first four chapters of Godard’s eight-part video series; unlike the other members of the roundtable — Florence Delay, Shigehiko Hasumi, and André S. Labarthe — I’d been unable to accept Godard’s invitation to view chapters 3a and 3b, devoted to Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, in Switzerland a few days prior to the event. A little over a year later, Godard brought these chapters and a still more recent one — 4a, on Alfred Hitchcock — with him to Toronto, where he was presenting For Ever Mozart, and showed me these three chapters in his hotel room over two consecutive evenings. We also had some opportunities to discuss the series (in English); some of our conversation was recorded, but much of it wasn’t. Read more
Ten Best Lists, 1980s
Out of the Blue (1980, Dennis Hopper)
Amor de Perdição (Manoel de Oliveira)
Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer)
Gal Young ‘Un (Victor Nunez)
Hardly Working (Jerry Lewis)
India Song (Marguerite Duras)
Mommie Dearest (Frank Perry)
Numéro Deux (Jean-Luc Godard)
Reds (Warren Beatty)
Shock Treatment (Jim Sharman)
Taxi Zum Klo (Frank Ripploh)
The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
Mammame (Raúl Ruiz)
Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
Mélo (Alain Resnais)
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Ishtar (Elaine May)
Landscape Suicide (James Benning)
Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer)
From the Pole to the Equator(Yervant Gianikian/Angela Ricci Lucchi)
Black Widow (Bob Rafelson)
Mix-Up (Françoise Romand)
Yeelen (Brightness) (Souleymane Cissé)
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth)
Repentance (Tengiz Abuladze)
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis)
King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard)
Talking to Strangers (Rob Tregenza)
Uncommon Senses: Plain Talk & Common Sense (Jon Jost)
Hairspray (John Waters)
Distant Voices/Still Lives (Terence Davies)
A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
High Hopes (Mike Leigh)
Golub (Jerry Blumenthal/Gordon Quinn)
Rembrandt Laughing (Jon Jost)
sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
Forevermore: Biography of Leach Lord (Eric Saks)
Say Anything… (Cameron Crowe)
Trailer for Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma
