Godard talks about the music of filmmaking
Jean-Luc Godard is one of the great, irreplaceable figures in film history. The French New Wave is unthinkable without him, and such films as "Breathless," "Alphaville," and "Pierrot le Fou" helped define the sensibility of the '60s.
At 74, Godard continues to direct. His latest film, "Notre Musique," is set at a writers' conference in Sarajevo. Its protagonist is a conscience-stricken Israeli journalist, Olga. The Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Jewish Film Festival are sponsoring 11 screenings of the film at the MFA, beginning this Wednesday12/29 at 8 p.m. Although Godard long ago ceased to be a central figure in world cinema, his influence endures. Any time you see a jump cut in a commercial or music video, you're seeing Godard. Michael Moore's agit-prop is a potbellied version of Godard's ideological films of the early '70s. And Quentin Tarantino puts his money where Godard's art is: He named his production company A Band Apart in honor of Godard's "Band à Part." Godard spoke by telephone earlier this month from the Swiss town of Rolle, where he lives and has his production facilities. His English is fluent, if sometimes imaginatively employed. Alternately playful and grave, he sounded frailer than he does in "Notre Musique." Playing himself, he smokes a big cigar and wanders around Sarajevo, a quizzical Quixote doubling as his own Sancho Panza (or is it the other way around?). The following are excerpts from the interview. Q: You say in "Notre Musique," "The principle of cinema: Go toward the light and shine it on our night. Our music." Is the cinema our music -- or is our music the night?A: It was just to make the audience remember the title and associate it with cinema. Cinema is one of our musics. plural Q: What are some of the others?
A: Oh, it's up to you to say. Q: That reminds me of something Olga says, "If anyone understands me, then I wasn't clear."
A: Oh, you know, that's a quote. It's from Mr. [Alan] Greenspan , to the Federal Reserve. Q: Why did you set the film in Sarajevo?
A: Because I was attracted by the city after what it had suffered in the war. I preferred to go after the war, after everyone who had been going there during the war had started going everywhere else. It's more interesting to see how the patient is surviving then, or trying to survive, and communicate. Q: In your more recent films, a key element is memory, remembering. The most obvious example would be your "Histoire(s) du cinema" --
A: Yes. Q: -- but also in "Eloge d'Amour," say, with Hollywood's attempt to purchase the rights to a story of the French Resistance, and now with remembering Sarajevo.
A: I'm becoming older and older. When you're becoming older and older it's a necessity to remember what can be remembered, especially if there is no direct memory. In my case, when I was young during the Second World War nobody told me about everything which happened. I had to discover it on my own because it is part of my story. Q: To go back to "Notre Musique," at one point you tell a group of students, "The field of text had covered the field of vision."
A: That's my opinion, yes. I'm not against the text. I'm not against it, because the relationship between text and the image, it's the bible. It's like brother and sister, or parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren. But the way it is used, mainly by the people of text, is a sort of tyranny. It's like an Asiatic despot, the dominance of the word. Q: Isn't it the other way around, though? Over the past century, film, video, the image have come to dominate the text.
A: No, no, they say it has, but it hasn't, it hasn't. [Chuckles.] How charming that would be. There would be no newspapers. Q: Well, I'm struck by the fact that, visually, text has become more and more important in your work. Is that an example of text coming to dominate the image?
A: No, not always. It's possible to write text, or write legend -- to write legend, as in the imagery in poetry. Those are images in text. The text is done in images. Q: In the film, you're asked if "the new little digital cameras" are the future of cinema. You ignore the question.
A: No, because I have no answer. Q: Well, you're a great user of new technology, in sound as well as image. You can't say whether or not that's better for film in the long run?
A: I've always been interested in new technology, since my very first movie where new negatives allowed us to shoot in the street. I like new technology because for a time, at the point of its invention, there are no rules. You have to find the right rules for yourself. But today the new technology, the rules are fixed already in the medium, if I may say so, so you have to be careful how you use it. The new little cameras, everyone says everyone can do his own movie now. But at the time the pencil was invented, its invention did not make obligatory that you can be a new Velazquez or Rembrandt. It is the same with the movies. It's not because you have a small camera and you can go everywhere, under the bed, in the pocket of your boy- or girlfriend, that you can make a "Splendor in the Grass" by [Elia] Kazan or "Touch of Evil" by [Orson] Welles, you see. Q: If you were starting out today, do you think you'd still become a filmmaker or are there other things that would --
A: I can't say, I can't say. I became very late a filmmaker, only at the age of 25, which is considered young in movies, but already an adult in usual life. Q: Can you ever imagine a day when you stop making films?
A: Ohhh, at my death. Not before then. And maybe at the time, I could use a little camera and record it. Q: [Godard's longtime cinematographer] Raoul Coutard has said there are only two subjects in your films: death and the impossibility of love. I would argue for a third, the cinema itself.
A: In the beginning, it was for the cinema itself. And the cinema itself made us -- my ancient comrades of the New Wave and me -- made us aware, little by little, of death, life, all of everything. Q: Half a century ago, you famously wrote of [the director] Nicholas Ray that "if the cinema no longer existed" he alone "gives the impression of being capable of reinventing it." Could that be said of you now, do you think?
A: Ohhh, I have some doubt about it. At least, the cinema we knew. But today things are going differently. A new kind of cinema, movies, TV can be invented, but I have a strong doubt that I can those things happen. Q: Are there any current filmmakers you particularly admire?
A: Quite a lot, quite a lot -- or no one. Q: Would you care to name some?
A: Give me names, and I'll tell you. A lot of them are rather unknown or unsuccessful. Q: If you could have had the career of any other filmmaker, have created the body of work of another filmmaker, who might that be? [This is the one time during the interview that Godard needed a question to be translated into French.]
A: No, no, I'm myself, and I admire the other one as the other one. I'm trying to remember lessons from them but to do my own job personally. Q: You were famously political in the '60 and '70s, and "Notre Musique" has a very strong political element. Is the global situation today, with Iraq and terrorism, worse than the situation four decades ago with Vietnam and the Cold War?
A: No, no. I remember when I was young, I put my first signature on a petition, it was called the Stockholm Petition. It was against the atomic bomb. Well, I failed. If I may tell you a short story? About 15 years ago, I was going from Canada to New York. At the customs, they said, "Why are you here, for business or pleasure?" I said, "Business." The officer said, "What kind of business?" I said, "Unsuccessful movies." He was very nice, because he said, "Oh, I'm so sorry." Q: Could you ever foresee doing a movie about Iraq or terrorism?
A: No, because I'm too far away, I'm too far away. I'm linked more, with affection, with Palestine and the Israeli-Palestine controversy because I've some sorrow and affection for those people who lost their country and tried to make an image of themselves, because before they were considered Arab or illegal, due to Israeli propaganda. They built their own image. Arafat was the leader, a great director. I have a feeling that I have lost my movie territory due to Hollywood propaganda and great tyranny over the old cinematography. It's strange for me, because in our youth we were very strong defenders for American movies. Q: Looking back, were you wrong in your youth? Was Hollywood good then and has become bad, or has it always been bad?
A: Yes, yes, it has changed. They are still ruling. They are stronger. Why, all people in the world, even I, I prefer a bad American movie to a better Norwegian movie. Why is that? It's something which I am trying to study but I have not been successful. I don't know, I have no answer. Q: You once said the figure you most [misheard by Godard as "almost"] identified with was [the 16th-century French essayist Michel de] Montaigne. Is that still true?
A: Yes, and "almost" doesn't enter into it all. I remember a quote from a French philosopher who spoke about Montaigne and about Descartes. He said Descartes is saying, in short, "I believe," and Montaigne is saying, in short, "I doubt." Q: And you're a Montaigne man?
A: I think so, yes. Q: What gives you joy in life?
A: Everything, everything -- if I can catch it! Q: What are you working on now?
A: An interview! Q: Are you working on a film project?
A: No, not for the moment. Q: But you hope to move on to something?
A: I hope so. Q: Let me just ask one last question. Have you roman ever been stung by a dead bee? [A recurring question from Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not," the words are quoted in passing in "Notre Musique."]
A: Ah, no, no. Q: Fair enough.
A: Okay. Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
