Ancient Greece marks the beginning of Western culture; the dominant cultural form in the modern world which has come to play an influential role on more cultures worldwide than any other culture. For many centuries it was an essentially European culture, but it has now mostly become an American culture. Shown above is a 1872 snapshot of the Partenon located in Athens, Greece. It has been restored since.
Having found Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard’s Breathless made me research other work by the author Richard Raskin and I ended up with finding one of his books on the photograph shown above. The extended essay/book is called A Child at Gunpoint [Amazon] and it documents one of the iconic pictures of the twentieth century. For a long time it was unknown who the boy in the picture was. It has been recently suggested that it was Tsvi Nussbaum. For an online analysis of the identity of the people in the photograph, see here.
In the introduction to the book the publisher writes:
Widely regarded as the most haunting image we have of the Holocaust, the photo of a young boy with his hands up being driven from the Warsaw ghetto has served as a touchstone for everyone from the Nuremberg prosecutors to Elie Wiesel, and from Susan Sontag to revisionist ranters on the web.
What makes this picture so ‘haunting‘ is that it involves children. The most famous picture of the Holocaust is probably this one. Searching for Child+Holocaust at Google brings up this.
This started out as a post on Gottfried Helnwein but ended up being about Messerschmidt (1736 – 1783).
An unidentified bust by Messerschmidt (1736 – 1783). One can only guess what makes a man in the 18th century make busts like this one. Wikipedia says “at about 1770-72 Messerschmidt began to work on his so-called character heads, obviously connected with certain paranoid ideas and hallucinations from which, at the beginning of the seventies, the master began to suffer.” If anything, this work reminds me of this.
Gottfried Helnwein — a beautiful image here — shares many affinities with the transgressive and hyperrealist work of Ron Mueck, Trevor Brown and Mark Ryden.
Viennese-born Helnwein is part of a tradition going back to the 18th century, to which Messerschmidt’s (another artist of the grotesque) grimacing sculptures belong. One sees, too, the common ground of his works with those of Viennese actionists Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who display their own bodies in the frame of reference of injury, pain, and death. One can also see this fascination for body language goes back to the expressive gesture in the work of Egon Schiele.
Dennis Cooper celebrates Alexandro Jodorowsky day.
As always, Dennis spends a considerate amount of time on the artists he celebrates. Here is a list of subtopics:
Jodorowsky is primarily know for directing the midnight movie and cult classic El Topo (1970), a kind of spaghetti western with Buñuelian overtones. Through the Panic Movement he was connected to two other cult figures: Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal. Most recently Jodorowsky made headlines news by officiating the non-denominational marriage ceremony of rock singer friend Marilyn Manson and burlesque performer Dita Von Teese.
El Topo (1970) – Alexandro Jodorowsky [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Jodorowsky:
“And I imagine…with great pleasure…all the horrible stirrings of the nonmanifested to bring forth the scream which creates the universe. Maybe one day I’ll see you trembling, and you’ll go into convulsions and grow larger and smaller until your mouth opens and the world will come from your mouth, escaping through the window like a river, and it will flood the city. And then we’ll begin to live.” — A. Jodorowsky, 1971.
L’Histoire d’O / Story of O (1954) – Pauline Reage [Amazon.com]
I’d never paid attention to it, but Pauline Réage’s 1954 novel Story of O betrays its ‘literary fiction’ (as opposed to genre fiction) antecedents by a metafictional streak; the novel has two alternative beginnings and endings. Postmodernism avant la lettre.
After the novel is two pages underway the narrator steps in and announces:
“Another version of the same beginning was simpler and more direct: the young woman, dressed in the same way [as in the first opening of the story], was driven by her lover and an unknown friend.”
Likewise, the author provides an alternative ending which is rather macabre:
“In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to Roissy, where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen.
There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent.”
Notice the secretive “a final chapter, which has been suppressed”. Very Borgesian.
P. S. I am currently reading the Dutch translation by Adriaan Morriën who adds an interesting afterword to his translation of this classic, which was written before the true identity of the writer of O was known. He notes that the women in Story of O are not slaves without rights but that their permission and consent is sought for everything they undergo. He also notes that apart from the first 10 pages the narrator steps out of the way to give an account seen through the point of view of O herself. The novel, he says “does not provide a philosophy nor a way of life but rather a description of human relations that are conceivable.” But this reminds me very much of what Poe said in 1850: “The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed.” Aury could not have written this novel without living the story first.
Sort of off-topic: staying with the subject of sadomasochism in fiction, Il Giornale Nuovo has a nice post on the graphic work of Bruno Schulz, a man primarily known for his modernist fiction. This image tells most of the story.
Continuing my Godard thread, I came across a very amusing and irreverent reading of Godard’s Breathless by a certain Dan Schneider who first excuses himself (and I concur) by saying that “the historic importance of such a film is indisputable”
[Breathless] would still be a bad film because it is so self-conscious, so poorly written, and so poorly acted that while watching it I thought I was actually watching a Roger Corman cheapo horror flick.
Now, let me add that there is more ‘art’ in your typical Corman piece from that era, say, The Last Woman on Earth, than in Breathless because Corman’s commentary on the state of filmmaking and art was more subtle (and often unintentional). Godard, by contrast, is so garishly dying to show his audience how hip and intellectual he is that he somehow failed to put any of that hipness or intellect — or any substance, for that matter– into his film.
Godard attempts to capture ‘reality’ on film without realizing that anything filmed becomes unreal — or irreal. In fact, any form of art can never be real. To convey reality most aptly, art needs to be most affected. By shooting his film with a handheld camera while Parisians gawk at the filming-in-process, Godard ends up making the most artificial of films while trying to show the most boring aspects of life. He thus focuses on the two worst aspects of film — the artificiality of cinéma vérité and the reality of tedium — rather than the two best ones: the ‘reality’ of film as artifice and the ‘artifice’ of poetically chosen reality.
Mention of the jump cut in my previous post on Godard inspired this post by Murdermystery Mike.
I was trying to think of earlier examples than 1960 [release of Godard’s Breathless] of the jump cut used jarringly, discontinuous, or emphasizing a gap in action. I’m fairly sure that if I keep on this I could find something eventually… the first thing that came to mind was both Kenneth Anger and Russ Meyer, but neither of them began using the jump cut in the way they’re known for now until around 64/65 (the opening montage of Faster Pussycat!… and the entirity of Scorpio Rising [as a note, I can’t much remember the editing in Fireworks as it’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I haven’t been able to afford the DVD yet…]). I’m sure there have to be examples dating from the same time or earlier than Breathless in avant-garde cinema (could you consider the editing of Un Chien Andalou contemporary [in the way Godard’s editing is being referred to as “contemporary”]?), but my mind is blank.
Addition 5/2/07: Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard’s Breathless:
Somewhat related to Autant-Lara’s explanation, and no more flattering, are the comments made by Robert Benayoun. While Autant-Lara claimed that Godard’s intention was to ruin the film in order to get even with the producer, Benayoun suggested that Godard’s jump cuts were made as a devious attempt to save a film that would otherwise have been a critical disaster.
I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas. –Jean-Luc Godard
Ever since high school, I have been pondering the uses and disuses of government funding of the arts. With regards to film the different policies in Europe and North America have engendered two types of cinema: European art house films and American blockbusters. A quote by a certain David Carr, a libertarian:
Many years ago, not long after I had graduated from law school, I briefly succumbed to a rather silly conviction that I was a cultural barbarian and this state of affairs could be addressed by becoming an afficianado of European cinema. I should admit that this conviction was in no small measure driven by the belief that being au fait with the work of European film-makers was a surefire way to impress the girlies.
So I started to spend much of my free time ferreting out art-house independent cinemas (of the kind that sold organic brownies in the foyer instead of popcorn) and sat through endless hours of turgid, narcolepsy-inducing, state-funded, navel-gazing about the tortured psychological relationship between a middle-aged sub-postmaster and his trotskyite revolutionary girlfriend in the seedy hostel they share with a couple of Vietnamese refugees on the outskirts of Hamburg. Or something.
These films have all amalgamated in my mind and I cannot remember the name of even a single one. After about six months, I decided that no woman was worth this level of constipation so I threw the towel in and went back to watching simplistic sci-fi blockbusters and gangster movies.
While I find Carr’s position particularly barbaric, I can understand his irritation at some European directors who excel at pompousness, seriousness and pretentiousness. Also, there seems to be no popular European cinema. Dyer and Vincendeau have argued in the early nineties that the only European popular cinema is US cinema. But surely, there has been a European popular cinema in the sixties and seventies?
On different note David Lynch is someone (whose films I like) who seems to be working within this paradigm of European artsiness and I wonder: are his films making money? Where does one find this kind of info. Here?
Also, government funding is tied in with the concept of cultural significance, the rationale being that a government can fund the cultural significant products of tomorrow.
Lynch’s oeuvre in 10 tropes:
the eternal dwarf – dreams and lesbian fantasies – doubles and alter egos – film/theatre within film – red curtains – unusual (long pause) conversations – sound effects – bizarre characters – kinky sex – mysterious titles
INLAND EMPIRE, the new Lynch that runs almost three hours, in a Belgian cinema starting Wednesday. Speaking of Belgian cinema, I’m quite enjoying the film writing of Dave Mestdach in Focus Knack (and Focus Knack in general).
Matthew of Esoteric Rabbit and Zach of Elusive Lucidity have been watching some of the films from Godard’s ‘revolutionary’ period. I’ve never been impressed by the films of Godard (not Breathless, not Pierrot, not Week End) except for Contempt (I guess due to my predilection for the prose of Moravia) and although I’ve never watched Godard’s political cinema, I suspect that I will like them in the way that I enjoyed William Klein’s Mr. Freedom. Also, here is an interesting post by Darren of Long Pauses on Godard’s 66-67 period.
Some notes on Godard’s films (and especially Le Gai savoir) and a critique by Guy Debord followed by some Godard quotes:
In the ‘revolutionary’ 1969 Le Gai Savoir Jean-Luc Godard liberates himself from all narrative requirements, and emerges as a pure cinematic essayist. Godard writes essays in the form of novels, or novels in the form of essays. The only difference is that instead of writing criticism, he films it.
Le Gai savoir (Eng:The Joy of Knowledge) is a film by Jean-Luc Godard, started before the events of May 68 and finished shortly afterwards. Coproduced by the O.R.T.F., the film was upon completion rejected by French national television, then released in the cinema where it was subsequently banned by the French government. The title references Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. [1]
Repetitions of the same clumsy stupidities in his films are automatically seen as breathtaking innovations. They are beyond any attempt at explanation; his admirers consume them as confusedly and arbitrarily as Godard produced them, because they recognize in them the consistent expression of a subjectivity. This is true, but it is a subjectivity on the level of a concierge educated by the mass media. Godard’s “critiques” never go beyond the innocuous humor typical of nightclub comedians or Mad magazine. His flaunted culture is largely the same as that of his audience, which has read exactly the same pages in the same drugstore paperbacks. –Situationist International, 1966
… it is harldy surprising that Godard was dismissed as an imbecile by many of those from the avant-garde milieus connected to lettrism. The ardour of Guy Debord and his associates on the subject of Godard stems directly from the fact that Jean-Luc was providing the bourgeoisie with a middlebrow commercialization of avant-garde cinema. Indeed, the invocation of the penal code during the discussion of prostitution in Vivre sa vie recalls Debord’s similar use of material on the soundtrack of his 1953 feature length anti-classic Screams in Favour of de Sade. —Summer of Love: psychedelic art, social crisis and counterculture in the 1960s
Contemporary use of the jump cut stems from its appearance in the work of Jean-Luc Godard and other filmmakers of the French New Wave of the late 1950s and 1960s. In Godard’s ground-breaking Breathless (1960), for example, he cut together shots of Jean Seberg riding in a convertible in such a way that the discontinuity between shots is emphasized. [1]
British Sounds (1970) is an experimental film by Jean-Luc Godard, there is a scene with an extended close-up of a woman’s pubis.
A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order. –Jean-Luc Godard
All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl. –Jean-Luc Godard
I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas. –Jean-Luc Godard
I write essays in the form of novels, or novels in the form of essays. I’m still as much of a critic as I ever was during the time of ‘Cahiers du Cinema.’ The only difference is that instead of writing criticism, I now film it.
To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can’t be separated. –Jean-Luc Godard
