Like Godard Wasn't Cool Enough Before: Now Says He Stole To Finance Films
Filed under: Classics, Critical Thought, Fandom, Out of the Past, Cinematical Indie
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Jean-Luc Godard, director of my favorite film of all time, Vivre sa vie, has come out of his self-imposed cocoon for an interview with German weekly Die Zeit. The highlight of the interview, which I haven't read, is apparently an admission by Godard that he stole money to finance his early classics. "I had no choice," the 76 year-old legend tells the paper. "Or at least it seemed that way to me. I even stole money from my family to give (fellow French director Jacques) Rivette for his first film. I pinched money to be able to see films and to make films." After that, Godard moves on to more typical utterances, like taking a whiz all over today's generation of filmmakers. "Three-quarters of the people who will receive prizes in Berlin only pick up the camera to feel alive," he says. "They do not use it to see things that you cannot see without a camera."
Godard has of course long since been written off by mainstream critics, with each new work he produces receiving only scorn. Roger Ebert, in particular, has turned on the great New Wave innovator by declaring him to be part of a category of filmmakers who hit their stride at a specific time and place, and then flame out. The opposite would be the Eastwoods and Scorseses, who keep it going decade after decade. I'm not really qualified to agree or disagree with Ebert since I've yet to see many of Godard's later works, but if Ebert is right, it wouldn't take anything away from his masterpieces.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-02-2007 @ 12:12PM
theviss said...
Godard has become an old twerp who only lives to repudiate his former positions on people like Howard Hawks, whom he once idolized but now perceives as a hack. I remember when he used to write so glowingly about American cars, American movies, American music - then he decided that America's politics made it evil and he was obligated to hate everything about it, including the stuff he enjoyed. His recent movies haven't been bad - Notre Musique had its moments - but they've been infected with this sour, almost dismissive quality, as if Godard were saying, "I'm still a genius, but you don't deserve me, so I'm going to be bitter and cryptic instead of giving all I can."
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12-02-2007 @ 1:03PM
George Myers said...
I am not sure that the reviewer is quite right, that is, perhaps a more historical perspective of this film-maker should be stated rather than comparisons to current American directors. The review for example at Moviefone of "British Sounds" (aka "Meet You at Mao") states the tour of a "Ford plant" which I don't think it was looks like an MG assembly line. Well no wonder there was protest, we were driving the worst cars in the world, yet today French cars are non-existent(ialism) in the US. Why?
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1-16-2008 @ 3:04PM
Ed Howard said...
Characterizing Godard's recent works as bitter is totally offbase. The mainstream may have dismissed his post-60s works as inaccessible or irrelevant, but he continues to be one of the most fascinating and restlessly inventive filmmakers around -- no mean feat considering his age and the number of years of filmmaking he has behind him. In all that time, he's never allowed his style to calcify. His films now are elegies for a lost moment of political engagement (1967 especially), but also hopeful attempts to reawaken such dialogues on politics, sensation, memory, and human relationships in the current times. To concentrate on Godard's (very real) bitterness over the worsening state of the world is to miss the other half of the equation, the hope that allows him to continue making works of such great intelligence and complexity.
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