Source: Page 146 of White Noise Keywords: "countryside," "mellowed," "Manson"

From: "dr. stranzhivago" <alikedisalike@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: godard vs. truffaut Date: 22 Jan 2005 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films

monsieurblob@hotmail.com wrote: > dr. stranzhivago wrote: > > monsieurblob@hotmail.com wrote: > > > they had this feud right, and whereas truffaut decided to castrate > > his > > > style in order to please the public, godard went along into a sort > of > > > framing one could never have imagined possible. > > there was nothing to castrate. > ah but there was. there was 'identification' to castrate. > modernist/avant garde movies are watched 30 years on and their politics > have disappeared. they break the boring norm, even then. and godard's > finnegan wake will prolly do so, thou i've only watched 1 hour of it. it's a matter of individual taste. for some, jules and jim has more lasting value. for others, it's breathless. to each according to his tastes. > truffaut was from the outset NEVER a > > radical filmmaker. > yeah he lied with his auteur politics thing. we all know that. > then he changed. he didn't lie. he was being very french in reducing complex reality into dogmatic theories. in this regard, he had once been very much like godard. it's a good thing truffaut mellowed and grew less dogmatic and judgmental. godard, on the other hand, turned cinema into pure theory. > > godard's initial originality gave way to dogmatism of the mao period. > > yes, godard sometimes did the unimaginable but was it worth imagining > > in the first place? > yeah well at that time radical politics appeared on each side. you > better shut up because your forefathers were ruining south east asia. no, it was radical left vs anti-radical america. america wanted south vietnam to have a chance like south korea, taiwan, japan, hong kong, and singapore. it was not left radicalism vs right radicalism, but totalitarian radical leftism vs pragmatic authoritarian conservatism. i'll take the latter, and history has proven the latter to be for more amenable to economic progress and democratic movements. south korea is paradise compared to north korea. capitalist hong kong, taiwan, and singapore were far saner places than mao's china or khmer rouge cambodia. > of course it gave way, but he quickly abandoned it. it only went from > 68 to 72, so you dont have to much to go on with that. > yes of course he did the unimaginable, and that's why he stays. his gave up extreme maoism by mid 70s. but, he never came clean. he never admitted he'd adopted an evil philosophy. we expect riefenstahl to face the past, not just bury it. so, why bury godard's shameful past? > > > see there's this drama truffaut comes up with, la peau douce, and > > it's > > > all really bout himself, about a supposed intellectual keeping to > > > timetables and not being able to escape them. it feeds from two > > > mediocre sources that purposely castrated their styles in order to > > > remain identifiable by the public and remain within mimesis/lack of > > > displacement, lack of freedom; hitchcock and balzac. > > 'castrate their styles' is rather vague, and i'm not sure what you > > mean. but, in defense of truffaut, he was very tolerant and > supportive > > of other artists, in france and abroad. so, if he castrated anything, > > it was his own balls. > > problem is godard not only castrated the emotions out of his movies > oh of course he castrated *your* emotions out of his movies, because > you only find emotions in japanese fascist cinema, the cinema of the > samurai you get so emotionally entangled with. he castrated his OWN emotions. up to his maoist period, he could be charming, poetic, even romantic as well as sardonic and satirical. but, he repressed all the lighter qualities for the morbid darkness of radical politics. also, if yojimbo met a bunch of leftist guerillas, i'm gonna cheer for mifune over leftist miscreants. > > tried to castrate everyone else. he demanded that his collegues adopt > > HIS politics and approach. > didnt they all, and as for as you go, don't you too... no. the other new wavers were tolerant. as for myself, i separate art from politics, at least when it comes to moral judgment. i don't care if eisenstein was a commie. he's in my top ten all time greats. still, if we are to discuss politics, we must discuss politics. what godard did he demanded everyone's art conform to HIS politics. i may bash mike leigh's politics, but i still admire much of naked and all of topsy turvy. i detest the politics of 'two or three things' but i still think it's fascinating as filmmaking. but 'weekend' is just obnoxious. it's godard blowing his nose and tossing us the snot. it's marxism as scatalogical rubbing the bourgeoisie's nose in the shit. > he turned into a dogmatic and abusive > > bully. truffaut had balls enough to tell godard to go to hell. > truffaut defended traditional storytelling and godard defended > modernist collage? if all godard did was defend an existent tradition--albeit in other forms than cinema--then he wasn't so innovative either. rather, he applied high art principles to a popular art form. also, feature film cinema is almost always necessarily narrative. godard would have done better with inherently abstract forms like painting or sculpture. the fact those forms freeze time renders even the most realistic works unrealistic. music, with its constant and overflowing fluidity is also inherently abstract. cinema flows in natural time. also, cinema can ONLY be seen in the way the author intended. with a sculpture, you can see it from any angle in anyway you wish. film have a beginning, a progression, and an ending; its perspectives are fixed by the director/cameraman. to pretend otherwise is to invite trouble. granted, one can play with time--chronological ordering or slo-mo--in cinema but it still deals with blocks of progression of time. later godard's attempt has been to connect the camera to the circuirtry of his brain or make cinema record his brain waves. he wants to express his feelings and thoughts before they are formulated concretely into film language. i guess this is linked with derrida's distrust of language as distortion as well as expression of reality. so godard wants us to experience a cinema on the edge of formulating into expression. well, interesting as theory. not much fun as practice of filmviewing. > personally, i like > > 'first name carmen' because it, at least, has a self-mocking sense of > > humor. > well thats the thing with you isnt. you always lurch out and try to > rescue movies of people who dont think like you when you find them > defeating themselves... how condescending godard defeated himself thru condescension. he considered himself and his cinema so far ahead of everyone else--with his devotees egging him on slavishly--that he made himself irrelevant except to film geeks. godard's later films have almost nothing to do with cinema or reality but only his private fetishes and conceits. godard's later films ought to taught in classes on phenomenology or deconstructivism or some such. as cinema or expression of reality, they offer little. > godard was a great joker so when he got all serious with idiot > > politics in the late 60s, he abandoned one of his greatest assets. > so you dont see anything in the passion or soigne ta droite, how cute. i think his maoist films are crap. his later stuff... i suspend judgment for the most part. i can't really condemn stuff i don't even understand. but, i know that for me and most people, they aren't much fun. his earlier stuff like 'masculin feminin' and 'les carabiniers' are not only thoughtprovoking but fun. > > one can dislike ford's politics--he was an old-fashioned liberal, by > > the way-- > liberal for the time you mean? in the sense that what we have today as > conservative used to be liberal then? yes, it's always relative. to some, gorbachev was a commie to the very end. to some, he was a traitor to marxism. perspectives determine political categories. by today's standards, ford would be a conservative. heck, FDR would be a conservative. > and still admire his films. he was, without question, one of > > the great masters though not one of my favs. > i'm tired of hearing this one. i dont share many people's appreciation > for these earlier movies only because they got there first. his films have quiet dignity and purposefulness. > crazy marx > > got his idea of dialectics from arch-conservative hegel. crazy > leftist > > sartre got his ideas from crazy rightist heidegger. crazy > homo-leftist > > foucault owes a great deal to crazy proto-fascist nichie. > > i think you're trying too hard to be like kent jones, a firebrand > > socio-cultural critic. but, even kent jones wouldn't dismiss ford > and > > hitchcock like you're doing. on the other hand, perhaps you possess > > wisdom all of us lack. in that case, i bow before thee. > says who, you? who's trying too hard to be like what? jerry falwell, > rush limbaugh? or what, michael medved or mel gibson? i can smell ya a > mile away, and besides you wouldnt know what its like being jones. > you'd read his stuff on hsiao hsien or bresson and make some phony > attempt at trying to convince us all that you dont understand what he's > saying. > and what is your worldview, then. you can't stand an inch of feminism, > from akerman to campion, you can't take it, you don't have the balls. falwell as critic. that would be entertaining. > course jones wouldnt dismiss them, he's got a job to keep. i couldnt > care less what complaints he may have of reaganite > anti-intellectualism, it's what he contributes to film style, freedom > from being stuck in the same motions. > you wouldnt understand that, your 'vision' doesnt go beyond falling in > love with every move mishima makes in a kurosawa or 'the heart' in an > ozu. i great admire ozu. can't say i enjoy his films much except for ohayo. kurosawa is widely admired by all except the french--who prefer mizoguchi, ozu, and even naruse--, and having vision is better than having anti-vision. i prefer guys like welles, eisenstein, kurosawa, tarkovsky, etc who have grand visions to flakes or grumps like ackerman or dumont. > also, it's not like godard didn't make mediocre films himself > > even during his peak. 'woman is a woman' is painful. > no it isnt painful, its rather great. > see thats the reason you're so fond of rosenbaum. it's as if his > extremism validates yours, but you're wrong. quit playing the rosenbaum > other. EVEN rosenbaum thinks poorly of woman is a woman. trust me, i generally like godard up to 67. even so, woman is a woman is painful, for me at least. everyone has his likes and dislikes. > now what politics do you find in passion that bother you so much. passion isn't offensive in that way. indeed, it's philosophical than political... but what in the hell is going on? i can barely stay awake. godard was best when working with cute women like karina. and even funereal contempt came to life with bardot. but, his later movies have no real characters. of course, that was intentional but i need people in movies. it's like the zoo. no matter how well-designed the cage, it needs animals. a movie is nothing without people to make it. it's nothing without people to watch it. it's not much without people to inhabit it. > > weekend's message is synonymous with that of the khmer rouge. it is a > > film of unremitting murderous hatred. it's also infantile. > what, all of it? when mike figgis praises it, its humour, is he being > khmer rougy? mike figgis is one of the worst ever. >is the scene at the shrink khmer rougy? yes, it says bourgeois mind is subhuman pigshit. there's nothing worth knowing or exploring. bourgeois skull is only worth crushing or washing totally with maoist detergent. > and the stuff on > cars and traffic jams and countryside and emily brönte and napoleon, > is that all khmer rouge? yes, it says capitalism and technology are ENTIRELY corrupt and corrupting and must be wiped out. it says high culture is irrelevant, and history should be understood and practiced as toys. revolutionaries must play as children in ransacking history and the bourgeois world. indeed, in cambodia, young khmer rouge kids killed as though playing games. >there are points, like at the end where they > really do seem to be preparing for the revolution when it spills into > khmer rougy, but so much of the politics still stand, the stuff on > consumerism, on shrinks, on traffic jams, but that's not something you > tolerate from anyone, anyways, so you jump to your usual hyperbole. godard did all this in his previous films with insight, balance, and wit. also, with skepticism about simple radical solutions. but, in 'weekend' it's nothing but absolute condemnation of the bourgeois and absolute embrace of radicalism. > continue trying to apply to the national review, but stop to think a > moment that a movie can be both leaning towards revolution and staying > within acceptable critique. but you wouldnt even accept any modernist > denunciation of automatism, now would you. godard didn't intend 'weekend' as a critique. he meant it as a manifesto to action. VIOLENT action. it has moments of brilliance and originality. but, it's comparable to the communist manifesto or triumph of the will. it IS propaganda. > > if it was meant as a joke--like monty python--, > but you dont like monty python because of the politics, so whatya > talkin about i love python. they were always funny. > maybe it's acceptable > > as black humor. as manifesto for political action, it's far worse > than > > 'birth of a nation'. > thats the thing isnt it. lacking a frame of reference, without > historical hindsight, and in a hurry, they're bound to make mistakes > while getting many things right too. this is a counterculture that > however much you demonize produced stuff like mysteries of the > organism. 'mysteries of the organism' is crap in my book. i'll take kusterica over dusan. also, if you defend 'weekend' as mere counterculture, couldn't one defend skinhead rock or charles manson family in the same manner? granted, history and culture are often shaped by lunatics and mavericks. but, it's the job of regular folks to be sane about insane works--good or bad. > > >the dziga vertov group movies have excellent > > > framing at least and numero deux is magnificient... then there are > > the > > > movies from the 80s like passion or soigne ta droite that are > > > absolutely stunning, and other ones like grandeur et decadence or > > > passion carmen that are also excellent. then there's in praise of > > love > > > and histoires which are stunning, and that's all i seen. > > ... if you understand what some of them about, i'm all ears. > which ones you wanna talk bout? any of his later ones. write long essays on them and i'll read them. i'm all ears. > > i think godard without humor is kinda pointless. yet his post maoist > > films are, for the most part, totally humorless and indulgently > > elliptical... > abstract, non figural, and lay primary importance on the soundtrack. > arent you into that? or you still lovin every moment of another samurai > movie? post-modernist samurai movies are as absurd as godard films. you should dig them. > like we're supposed to be able to read his mind. > what is that what you want, so that you can reduce and condemn him? my point is if he has something urgent to say, just say it. why does he pretend that he possesses some profound truth yet is unwilling to lay it down straight? of course, one can argue godard's most profound message is the danger of expressing messages itself. therefore, he makes us focus on the means of expression than the expression. but enough already. if he's gonna go on and on about yugoslavia or israel, lay it to me straight. i don't wanna be waiting for godard. 'weekend' as loathesome as it is, lays it straight. i can condemn it for what it is. as for his philosophical works, i guess it's okay to be vague about philosophy. but whenever godard talks about politics today, he should do it straight. don't get elliptical about issues where people are getting killed. > > it's a case of a filmmaker who doesn't believe in filmaking making > > films. > more like the case of a filmmaker that makes cinematograph movies, that > makes cinema, when traditional post classicist movies make anti-cinema, > hypertrofied things prolly like alexander or star wars. come to think of it, godard sees himself as a jedi knight in exile from the clutches from the Evil Empire. he is yodard, so despite all his pretensions he too is part of the star wars universe. there's obi wan kentjonesobi. and you are luke blobtalker. > > he's making films just to unmake them. > which is how they shoulda been all along i just hope godard assemble machine tools or prepare food. > > but, i know film is fake, already. do something with it is what i > say. > > derrida told us words distort reality and so we should play with > words. > > godard has told us film distorts reality and so we play with > mechanism > > of film and perception. > i dont give a fuck what godard's politics are up to, or when he calls > israelis nazis or engages in foolish anti americanism like in praise of > love. but when he does it, i merely equate him with you. > so godard plays with perception, he obviously gives us another sort of > perception. how you can engage over and over again in similar yet > slightly different movies baffles me. i'm fed up that shit. i want > radically different movies. but, godard's film have also become formulaic. godard's films from the late 70s to the present have essentially been repetitions of the same formula. in this regard, godard is more a perfectionist like ozu than a permanent revolutionary. i like originality too, but it has to work. it's like evolution. most mutations are harmful or useless. only a small fraction advances evolution. i don't care for newness for newness sake. i'll take vanilla ice cream again and again over garlic ice cream. > > i thought this stuff thought-provoking til i was 20. then, i couldn't > > help thinking i don't wanna watch movies which just tell me we should > > communicate AROUND than THRU cinema. of course, despite godard's > > pretentions, it's still coming THRU cinema. > godard, modernism and avant garde were doomed from the start. that's > the only thing that makes them valuable, their rarity. if we all made > movies and behaved- because the films you love are just hypertrofied > mimesis of ourselves- in hsiao hsien manner then there wouldnt be value > in them. dont you see? leave your extremist politics on one side. okay, but if everyone decided to the godard thing, would you still find it precious? the reason why so few are doing the godard thing is because it's not worth doing. i'm glad we have A godard. we need at least one. but, please, i don't need a 1000 godards playing that radical game. walk inside a museum of contemporary art and you'll soon be bored than excited. the new is already old in art. also, i think you're practicing an aesthetic dogmatism. the way i see it, the most important thing for an artist is to be true to himself. however i feel about godard, i think he has done what he wanted to do, felt comfortable doing. but, one can say the same for kurosawa, lean, ford, ozu, suzuki, truffaut, etc. long live the difference. if a blues artist wants to sing the blues, so be it. if a rock n roller wanna stick to classic rock n roll, okay. if pink floyd loved doing their weird stuff, fine too. it's like that song 'act naturally'. the problem is you dislike most directors because they are not 'radical', 'original', or whatever enough for you. i think, in his own way, spielberg is as much a personal artist as godard or rivette or bergman or kubrick. he does what he feels comfortable with. and if most people prefer spielberg over godard, what can you do about it? it's democracy, isn't it? you respect the tastes of others, don't you? or, do you expect all artists to be like godard, to like godard over all others? it'd be foolish for godard to make 'saving private ryan' or 'la strada'. but equally stupid for spielberg to make 'first name carmen' or 'helas pour mois'. or equally absurd for fellini to make 'late spring' or 'celine and julie go boating'. in the case of ackerman, it's absurd she should be making any movie at all. anway, there you have it. let everyone make what they feel comfortable with. as for the rest of us, we can like or dislike what they produce. but, it's misguided to demand that all other filmmakers be like godard or some other radical filmmaker. you may prefer french cooking over others but should everyone do french cooking? shouldn't others prepare japanese, italian, chinese, american, or spanish dishes? or whatever they believe in? the new wave was great because of its diversity. rohmer, rivette, truffaut, chabrol, and godard all brought something different to the table. same with the greats of jazz and british rock. beatles were not the stones were not the who were not the floyd were not the yardbirds were the kinks. some are more orignal than others. some are more masterful than others. some are more soulful than others. some are more perfectionist than others. some are more spontaneous than others. long live the difference. > > anyway, if i want lectures on the nature of reality and art and > > society, i'll read a phisophical text or a historical book. i don't > > need it from a movie. for me, a book on the cultural revolution or > the > > killing fields tells me more about what i need to know about politics > > than 'weekend' which is really dumb, even as propaganda. > and didnt you preach to us all about how you praise movies despite > their politics, like with battleship potempkin. admittedly though, your > boutade on eisenstein was just a bluff, not only because we all know > those politics are dead but also since reactionary film style has > tended to follow montage and despise mise en scene as modernist > goobledygook. i really think weekend is a bad movie. not entirely bad but tiresome and sloppy. battleship potemkin is an outstanding piece of filmmaking however you look at it.

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