Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

Most informed film buffs would go slightly further than this, observing that Godard’s influence reaches far beyond European cinema. Indeed as a Singaporean friend of mine writes: “So much of film culture in my generation (pre internet, pre Youtube) was cultivated by screenings and film gatherings at the Goethe Institute and Alliance Francaise, borrowing videos from the British Council. They were cultural oasis for many of us.”

Godard’s visual and narrative innovations are such that I know of no filmmaker that has not been influenced by him, if not directly, then through the adaptation of his filmic style in other directors’ films. The loose, yet tense camera-work, the sometimes disjointed and “stream-of-consciousness” story-telling, the fore-grounding of the technique of filmmaking in the film itself — all these things are commonplaces today. Although there were forerunners and experiments in these formal cinematic techniques before Godard, no one mastered them and developed them to the point of artistry as he did. He made truly major breakthroughs that changed the course of cinema as an art form (and as a commercial industry, although that took a little longer). For Godard it was never just about telling a snappy or even a sophisticated story, rather it was about inventing entirely new ways of envisioning a story. Few other filmmakers can claim such impact — perhaps Griffith, Ganz, Murnau, Lang, Eisenstein, Welles, Disney, Ozu, Buñuel, Antonioni, Lucas … To paraphrase Richard Nixon on Keynes: we’re all Godardians now.

In fact, it is virtually impossible to make a film nowadays that in some way doesn’t show the influence of the Nouvelle Vague. This is to say that the Nouvelle Vague isn’t Nouvelle any more. Godard admits as much in the interview when he says “Was mir wirklich an der Nouvelle Vague gefiel, war der Austausch unter den Regisseuren. Es war eine ziemlich glückliche Zeit. Heute rede ich beim Drehen nur mit den Technikern, und ich weiß nicht, was sie über meinen Film denken.” [What I really liked about the Nouvelle Vague, was the exchange among the directors. It was a very happy time. Today I talk about filmmaking with only technicians, and I do not know what they think about my movie.]

And again: “Wir wollten gegen die Regeln arbeiten, aber ohne neue Regeln zu erfinden. Die Politik der Autoren der Nouvelle Vague bestand ja nur darin, den Beitrag des Regisseurs als eines Bilderschöpfers gegenüber dem Drehbuchautor anzuerkennen. Es ging darum, die Grammatik des Kinos als eigenständige visuelle Grammatik zu behandeln und zu retten, so wie sie von manchen Stummfilmregisseuren, etwa Griffith, erfunden worden war. Es ist eine Grammatik des Bildererzählens, die sich fortwährend erneuern muss, gegen die Stereotypen und die Routine. Und die das Bild ins Verhältnis zu vorherigen Bildern setzt. Es gibt Filme, die immer noch für diese Haltung stehen. Aber es ist schwerer, sie zu machen. Nicht, weil es schwerer geworden ist, das Geld zu finden. Aber die Ideen, die wir hatten, sind verschwunden, sie erneuern sich nicht. Für mich ist es schwerer geworden, eine Idee zu haben, wie man so sagt.” [We wanted to break the rules, but without inventing new rules. The politics of the authors of the Nouvelle Vague consisted only in the contribution of the director as an image creator acknowleged over the scriptwriter. It was a matter of the grammar of cinema as an independent visual grammar to treat and recover, as some silent film directors such as Griffith, invented. It is a grammar of the visual storytellers who must continually renew it, against stereotypes and routine. And the picture in relation to previous sets of images. There are films that still take this attitude. But it is difficult for them to be made. Not because it has become harder to spend or find money. But the ideas that we had are gone, they will not come back. For me, it has become harder, to have an idea, as it’s said.]

Godard goes on to critique Television as simply radio with some badly concocted images thrown on top: “Nirgends wird das Bild so schlecht behandelt wie im Fernsehen.” [Nowhere is the image so badly treated as in television.] He also scorns movie-makers whose sole motivation is self-expression: “Aber die Menschen machen Filme im Internet, weil sie das Bedürfnis haben zu existieren, nicht weil sie etwas sehen wollen.”[But people make movies on the Internet because they have a need to exist, not because they want to envision something.] For Godard, filmmaking revolves around the image, but self-expression revolves around the self. Since the renewal of the visual grammar of cinema constitutes the heart of the filmmaker’s metier, mere self-expression can only be an after-thought. After all, grammar is objective for everyone, not something I make up as my own personal expression.

As for the revelation that he took money from his Mom’s purse to see a film or two, this is the least significant part of the interview. Those who think this is a horrible moral failing and want to condemn Godard for it are welcome to do that. My counsel, however, is to remember the parable of the mote-and-the-beam (Mt 7:3-5), watch Truffaut’s film Les Quatre cents coups, Rosselini’s Paisan and Germania anno zero, and reflect on what life was like in Europe after World War II. Moral problems are something we all have to some degree: “For there is no distinction; all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:21-22). Godard’s interview holds many insights and should be read with great attention.

Let’s not fall into the superficial swamp which believes