Godard on Godard: Notes for a Reading

Abstract

Godard on Godard1 contains 116 pieces written or spoken by Godard between June 1950 and August 1967. Items 1-85 comprise Godard's output as film critic through July 1959. In August-September 1959, Godard dropped regular criticism and shot Breathless. He wrote about films after this, but much less frequently. The book collects 31 of these occasional pieces under the heading Marginal Notes While Filming-memorials, statements on his own films, defenses of neglected films, speech, protest letter, contributions to dictionary of American film-makers, and four interviews. Among the latter are two long Cahiers interviews edited and revised by Godard himself, dated December 1962 (Breathless to Vivre Sa Vie) and October 1965 (Les Carabiniers to Pierrot le Fou). The following notes concern items 1-85, Godard's film criticism written before August 1959. The distribution of these pieces in time is interesting. Godard wrote 11 pieces between June 1950 and October 1952, then published nothing for almost four years. In August 1956 he returned to criticism and turned out 74 pieces in the three years before he made Breathless. His most productive period was the last six months, February-July 1959, in which he wrote 31 pieces. Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction (#9) was written in 1952, when Godard was 21. It is his longest theoretical piece and arguably his most important. It is direct attack upon the Bazinian position, itself in process of formation at this time but settled in its main outlines. The specific object of Godard's critique is Bazin's account of classical construction (decoupage) in cinema. According to Bazin, standard mode of shot breakdown dominated world cinema during the 1930-1939 period. In the forties, the composition-in-depth technique of Welles and Wyler and Italian neorealism constituted revolution in expression. Their avoidance of editing effects and of frame manipulations was a positive technique that produces better results than classical breakdown of shots could ever have done. These