GODARD
LOVE
THE POEMS
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Few directors can make me feel both excited and angry when I watch a movie like Godard.
The excitement is that there are always a few rocked points in a movie, which makes people exclaim that the original movie can still be made like this.
Still, Godard is really infuriating, and in front of his films, I'm ashamed of my barren thoughts. Because I really can't understand.
In addition to my own shallowness, the main reason for this is of course the film itself. As he said the most widely circulated:
"Generally speaking, movies have a beginning, a process, and an ending, but in reality, sometimes you don't need to follow that order."
Godard is too good at teasing the audience. In his films, you can't find a complete story, no causes and consequences, difficult to logically self-consistent, and watching it like a cloud.
Broken, free, metaphysical, is the most intuitive feeling.
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Making a film should have a political purpose is also Godard's famous quote. It's just that the new wave is hard enough to understand, and it is even more obscure to take political elements.
So I prefer Godard before 1968, or the romantic period when it only takes a woman and a gun to make a movie, with the little sweetness of his and Karina's daily life, and the loneliness after the breakdown of the relationship.
It's about chasing and giving up, it's about depravity and freedom, but there's also an amiable, funny, and playful side.
French author Michel Marley said of Godard: "It is difficult to read" Godard's films.
A dizzying director who supports me to a large extent, probably as a self-cultivation of young people who pretend to watch movies.
I don't want to pretend to understand, I really don't understand, but all the review articles that try to organize his films into a secular and normal logical story, summarizing the meaning of emotional morality, I am not very interested in reading.
Probably the reason I still like watching his movies is because of this feeling of being unrestrained, there is no psychological burden after watching it, everything is like a flashback of inspiration in your mind, you remember some lines, remember some pictures, but don't be sad for a story, don't be afraid to appear preaching.
And as he himself said: what is the real style? But in fact, I also say that stylelessness is the self-proof of thought, what Hegel meant by freedom.
This made me a little more confident in watching his movies.
He may also remind us that a movie is a movie, not a means of indoctrination, not a passive guide to lose thinking by the camera manipulation, and the movie cannot teach us any life experience.
He simply provides pleasure to people, and through its inherent conflicts, contradictions, and aesthetics, makes you feel both joy and sadness.
And the feeling of both can only be achieved in movies.
Anyway, in the spirit of not wanting (or not) to delve into godard's political philosophy, wanted to talk about the most unique aesthetic elements of his films. It is also a self-grooming, hoping to help the children's shoes that have seen him or want to see him.
chapter 1
At first, due to insufficient funding, Godard invented the jump to deal with the tight budget, but it did not expect that this would become his most classic and controversial unique film language.
Godard abandons the normal narrative, throws away the montage that connects the movement of things, and thus loses the causal relationship and the logical story, which in our view is in the clouds.
For example, in Exhausted, the car driving from right to left will suddenly become left to right, and in the chase scene, the truck will suddenly disappear.
The two were in the house, standing by the mirror talking, but suddenly switched to the picture of getting dressed and lying on the bed, and the conversation was still continuous.
In "Piero the Madman", in the case of the same location, the present and the futuristic continuously appear in the same scene, regardless of the audience's viewing habits.
Thus the continuity of time is completely destroyed, leaving only the language and behavior that Godard believes to be the most essential.
Godard would also have the camera wander away on a whim, inserting unrelated shots in two consecutive motions for no reason.
For example, in a scene-within-a-play clip in "Contempt", he inserted many shots of ancient Greek statues, and there was a director in the background who talked about the sweetness of being a director.
《The mepris》-1963
In "Women Are Women", when Anna talks to her girlfriend, the shaky handheld photography is persistently filming passers-by, shooting street scenes, and always accompanied by the voiceover of their chat, brewing a sense of trepidation in time and space.
In Godard's films, absurd subtitles are often inserted to interrupt the narrative of the story.
These shots are often large fonts in solid colors, sometimes without logic that interrupts coherent narratives, and inexplicably plays a large philosophical short poem.
Sometimes it's the presence involved in the narrative process, like a narration. Probably afraid that you can't understand it, give you a subtitle reminder.
CINEMA///
There are also some textures with very different styles instead of pictures.
For example, in "Piero the Madman", Ferdinand cuts to Picasso's painting when he is subjected to violence.
The fanaticism of Maoism and the fantasy of carrying out local revolution in "Chinese Girls" uses pop-style heroine stickers.
/《Chinese》-1968
In short, Godard almost never made a film in normal order, in which each shot is equal, each enjoying the freedom of the night.
But it is this disorganized, clueless style that makes him the most adorable humor.
chapter 2
Brecht's theory of defamiliarization also had a deep influence on Godard, and in "The Chinese Girl", Leod erased the names of various cultural celebrities on the blackboard one by one, leaving Brecht alone.
If you turn over and watch "The Tale of Wulin", there is an episode in which Ten Niang said that her acting skills are mei sibu, that is, Mei Lanfang, Stanley, Brecht.
Almost every of Godard's films uses Brecht's distancing effect to keep the actors and characters, the audience and the characters, and let the audience enter the story more rationally.
A common one is interaction with the camera.
For example, in "A Woman is a Woman", Carina is wicked at the camera in the film.
Leod expressed his opinion of the film to the viewers.
When they were ready to quarrel, they also deliberately apologized to the camera for bowing to the attention, which was extremely cute.
Sometimes Godard also directly exposed the camera and the shooting crew. In "Woman is a Woman" and "Contempt", both open in this way, along with three voiceovers: "Lights", "Camera", "Start Shooting!"
Godard doesn't want to manipulate the audience, as if everything you think is grand and gorgeous, and when you are immersed in time and space that you almost think you have personally experienced, he always wants to interrupt you.
Hey, it's just a movie.
chapter 3
The poem of the German poet Stephen Georg: "Where words are broken, there is nothing to be found". Deconstructing language is a powerful means of dissolving the illusion of continuity.
With this method, Godard often makes the protagonist in the film talk nonsense, pulling things up, making people confused.
At the beginning of "Weekend", the heroine talks about a 3p experience with her back to the camera, and the scale is so large that it causes discomfort.
In "I Know a Little Bit about Her One or Two", the heroine is always muttering to herself in front of the camera, philosophy, life, society, politics... Reading a film paper.
By the time of "Chinese Girl", almost entirely and unreservedly documented the lengthy dialogue, debates, and speeches between the members of the research group.
His films are full of extreme talkers, who know almost everything from religious philosophy to pop culture to political advocacy, and are quite insightful, which most people see as Godard's ostentation of his erudition.
However, probably only in French movies, when the protagonist talks about abstract concepts such as "love", "language", "thought", "philosophy" and so on, it will not make people feel pretentious, but feel that they are really shallow.
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It's not enough for a person to talk about it continuously, and Godard also likes to let the dialogue of the characters often be in a "double monologue" situation, especially between men and women.
At the end of Exhausted, when Patricia informs Michelle that she exposed him, there is a very classic "double monologue", and the same is true in Piero the Mad. Although on the surface they are talking to each other sentence by sentence, in fact, two people are talking to each other, each telling their own heart, lonely and distant.
In addition to the dialogue of the characters, Godard's films also experiment with some of his unique personal aesthetics.
For example, using noise to cover many "important" dialogues, even if you can't hear what the characters are saying, sometimes the noise simply becomes the dialogue itself.
In the final part of José and Carmen's conversation by the sea, countless syllables are lost in the rhythmic lapping of the waves against the shore.
There are musical cut-off scenes in "Outlaws", such as when the protagonist stops an action or conversation, and the music also stops abruptly, as if pressing the pause button.
There are also some music that contrasts with the scenes, such as the violent scene, which begins to play melodious piano music.
Analog sound is also an idea with strong dramatic tension in Godard's films.
The most impressive is the sound painting game in "Woman is a Woman" that parodies Truffaut's "Shoot the Pianist", in which the actors make piano playing in the air, and the background sound is synchronized with the fingering, which immediately changes the pistol gesture, accompanied by the sound of gunfire.
The same technique is also seen in Piero the Madman, where Belmondo uses a match sandwiched between his fingers as a "bomb", with a realistic bomb-dropping background sound effect, simulating the scene during the BOMBing of the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, blurring the line between reality and imagination.
chapter 4
Most of Godard's famous works are black and white, but I actually love his colors more, and I can only superficially understand the beauty of visual impact.
Godard's favorite thing is red, and fanatics like him must also be warm red, red with political demands, enough to shock people's hearts.
When his film character is injured, "not blood, but red" flows.
Therefore, the blood in Godard's films is all paint, emphasizing only the sensory effects of red itself and the powerful power of vision, rather than pointing to the pure emotion of truth and falsehood.
Godard's ten-minute love for bright and saturated solid colors, especially blue, white and red, very French color preparation, bright and full, bringing people a sense of aesthetic pleasure, but in fact, the core of most stories is some murder, escape.
Godard's first color widescreen film, Women Are Women, is most notable in the film is Anna Karina's "blue-white-red" mix of outfits — blue hats, white coats, red skirts, and blue stockings— bright solid colors that have a dizzying power and reflect Karina's vibrant, wayward personality.
The blue, white and red color scheme is played to the extreme by "Pierrot the Madman", and the color contrast between water and fire is full of absurd romanticism.
Throughout the film, Godard uses blue and red as symbols of Ferdinand's conflict between comfort and adventure. Finally he whitewashed his face with blue paint and wrapped his face in red explosives, choosing to kill himself.
The story begins with a calm blue and ends with a calm sea, and this journey of escape and blazing red are nothing more than unfinished adventures and pursuits, and finally return to dead silence.
Another color that is intoxicating enough is "Contempt", In which Godard mainly uses red, yellow and blue colors to participate in the narrative, the golden sunlight of the Mediterranean, the statues of Athena and Poseidon painted with blue eyes, and the big red bathrobe of the sexy wild cat Brigitte Bardot.
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The epic "Odyssey" of the play-in-play also uses pure red, yellow and blue, whether it is color or plot, everywhere connects with the intertextual relationship with "Contempt".
The blue main color set near the end is full of sad and lost emotions.
In addition to his fascination with large color blocks, Godard's films often feature filter-effected solid color stage light, making the picture look like a hazy and distant fantasy.
As Karina dances the striptease, the solid stage lights of red, blue and purple alternately envelop her, focusing on the charm and liveliness of the characters.
At the beginning of "Contempt", brigitte Bardot is also changing the red, white and blue filter when she is naked, making the erotic scenes look deliberate and unreal.
In Piero the Madman, different color filters are used alternately in a single banquet scene, as if traveling through multiple time and space, and when I first watched it, I was completely stunned.
The rooms in Godard's films are mostly pure white walls to allow bright colors to come in.
When people are close-up, there are always all kinds of strange paintings hanging behind them, of course, some of which are movie posters. Occasionally, I put up my own posters and put up a small advertisement.
chapter 5
The directors of French films, fashion taste will not be bad. Hou Mai, who has written about it before, is also known for his oil painting-like pastel colors and the French fashion of efortless chic.
The avant-garde Godard seems to be unsympathetic, but in fact, the sense of fashion is also excellent.
The most classic is the image of Jane Silva in "Exhausted".
Clean and neat short hair, French sea soul shirt, is now the most daily French wear model.
Godard also objected to giving her extra light, wearing a simple dress bought from a cheap store and an advertising T-shirt emblazoned with the words "New York Herald Tribune" printed on it.
Unlike the Classical Beauty of the Hollywood film stars of the same period, Jane Xi Bao represents an independent modern beauty, permeated with frank boyishness.
The heroine of "Contempt" was Brigitte Bardot, the most famous and high-paid film star in the film industry at the time, who continued the neat and sexy female image of Godard's films: a crewneck striped shirt, a striped vest with a knit shirt, and a slim sleeveless dress.
Godard followed her walking with a smooth and elegant lens, a ballet-trained bardor herself, walking slowly in kitten heels, as fragile and soft as a small wild cat.
The red and blue knitwear in "I Know a Little Bit about Her One or Two" supports the tone of the entire film, as well as Godard's favorite striped elements, and also plays the colorful to the extreme.
On how to go out and change, Godard and Houmai are as well versed in the essence of collocation. The most worth learning about daily dressing is probably the heroine of "Weekend", with two knitwear, she is stunned to change several outfits along the way.
As the muse and ex-wife of early Godard films, Godard really gave Anna Karina all the romance.
With upturned cat eyeliner, thick lower eyelashes, exaggerated blue eyeshadow, and Bambi's fragile and curious eyes, she is born with a playful, simple, and neurotic beauty.
Whether it's stealing clothes in a sea soul shirt and a red dress in "Piero the Madman", or running around in a plaid skirt and black stockings in "Outlaw", or the most iconic red and blue stockings that bear the effect of the film's color block, Carina is the epitome of French style on the screen.
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In fact, Godard's films are not so raw and unintended, and the way I resist the anxiety or constant suspension that occurs in the process of watching the film is that as long as I understand his view that "every shot is equal", I probably know that.
The film is not a complete story, it is more like our daily life, without the perspective of God, can not have absolute empathy with anyone, do not know the full picture and development of things, there will be unpredictable accidents, and absent-minded wandering, and can only see the immediate.
Godard's film is like a shattered kaleidoscope, where you can reflect different landscapes, but you actually know that inside the kaleidoscope, there is only one painting.
Of course, what supports me to watch the slides is probably that it is obscure at the same time, and it is so romantic and lawless.
This bourgeois contrarian, singing anarchist liberal poems, is sometimes romantic and idle, sometimes radical and stubborn, and makes people feel childish.
In "Whatever You Want", he lets you look at the back and back of the male protagonist's back and head without a head.
In "Weekend", a long eight-minute traffic jam shot was filmed, and only he would be so bored.
He also made a classic clip of three people running in the Louvre to break the record for the shortest time tour in "Outlaws".
This scene was also paid tribute to Byrdard's fan brother Bertolucci in "Dream of Paris".
The three of them danced Madison in the café, meaningless but mindless to watch them do stupidly. This passage is also the source of the rabbit dance in Quentin's Pulp Fiction.
And the famous minute of silence, Godard really shuts down all the tracks, leaving a silence in the picture, serious in the movie, who dares to tease the audience like this.
How to continue arguing with your partner when you gamble and refuse to talk? The advice given in "A Woman is a Woman" is that the two take turns carrying the floor lamp, go to the bookshelf to pick up books, and use a certain word on the cover as a scolding language to fight back.
True, there are no intellectual youths in French cinema who have not read books.
We can still understand Godard a little bit after all, crazy, chaotic, melancholy, full of hallucinations, uncertainties.
He always keeps a sense of distance from you, even if it is a continuous and dignified close-up of the character, it is difficult for you to find his emotions, only to feel alienated and strange.
Then follow the freedom constructed in his films, to control his own thoughts, which is probably the nothingness he is chasing.
"Between sadness and nothingness, what do you choose?"
"I choose nothingness.
Either it's all mine or nothing. ”
Reading Godard is probably like spending a muddy time, crushing time, blurring out details, and dissolving the normal and normative aspects of public order and good customs.
Just watch them wander aimlessly, talking about mechanically dancing boring dialogue, read anecdotes in the newspaper, observe if the umbrella on the balcony will fall, drive the convertible into the sea, tan the skin on the beach, and bury yourself in the sand, as if it were enough.
This feeling of doing nothing and doing whatever you want is fascinating.
Always think of the line piero the madman Pierrot said:
Fortunately, I don't like to eat spinach, otherwise I would have eaten spinach.
There is no barrier between liking and acting, and there can be no logic between language and expression.
Always mysterious and vague, always illusory and free.
It was charming and confusing, and then I had to shrug and say:
Whatever about him, this is Godard's compulsion, why think so much.
PS: Received a few Godard film resources, want to see the children's shoes can gzh backstage reply to "Godard", and then randomly send you one of them, with the fate to watch it ~
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