Film Quarterly 1968 Vol 22 n.2

7/30/2019 Film Quarterly 1968 Vol 22 n.2

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Struggle on Two Fronts: A Conversation with Jean-Luc GodardAuthor(s): Jacques Bontemps, Jean-Louis Comolli, Michel Delahaye, Jean Narboni, Jean-LucGodardSource: Film Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Winter, 1968-1969), pp. 20-35Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4621423 .

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Strugg le o n T w o F r o n t s :A Conversation w i t h Jean-Luc G o d a r d"Whatwe demand s the unityof politicsandart,theunityof contentandform,the unity of revolutionarypolitical content and the highest possibleperfectionof artistic form. Works of art which lack artisticquality have no force, howeverprogressive hey arepolitically. Therefore,we oppose both worksof artwith a wrong political viewpoint and the tendencytoward the "postersand slogan style"which is cor-rect in political viewpoint but lacking in artisticpower. On questions of literatureand art we mustcarry on a struggle on two fronts."-"Talksat theYenan Forum on Literatureand Art" (May 1942),Quotationsfrom Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Peking,Foreign LanguagePress,1966,p. 302.Because of the kind and the degree of its commit-ment, people are wondering whether La Chinoisedoesn't risk losing adherents to all the political"lines,"and whether it doesn't, then, in the finalanalysis,justbring t all backdown to film.If that were the case, it would have missed itsmark and be reactionary.What you say remindsmeof what Phillipe Sollers told me about it. Thoughhe, unlike the people you speak of, bases his viewof it on the idea that it doesn't as a matterof fact"bringit all down to film." To give support to hisview, he points to the conversationbetween AnneWiazemsky and Francis Jeansonon the train. Ac-cordingto Sollers,the scene is reactionary. t's reac-tionarybecauseit pits the "real" alkof a realperson-the talkhas to be "real,"he says,becausethe char-acter's name, like the real man's, is "Jeanson"-against the "fictional"speech of a pseudorevolu-tionary,and because the scene seems to justify theformer.

Do you think t does?I think it justifiesAnneWiazemsky'sposition.Butspectatorsside with whicheverthey choose.

Why did you ask Francis Jeanson to be in themovie?Because I knew him. So did Anne WiazemskyShe'd studied philosophy with him. That meantthey'd be able to talk. Anyway, Jeanson'sthe kindof man who reallylikes talkingto people. He'd eventalk to a wall. He has the kind of humanityPaso-lini defined when he said, in the movie Fieschimade about him for television,he didn'tlike talkingto dogs in the familiar ermsyou'resupposedto use.In any event, I needed him, Francis Jeanson,notsomeone else, for a TECHNICALeason: the manAnne talked to would have to be a man who under-stood her, who'd be able to fit his speech to hers;itwould be just that much harderwhen Anne's text,if you can call it a "text,"wasn't her own: I whis-pered it to her. I'd tried to find phrasesthat didn'tsoundtoo much like slogans.But they'd still need tobe linked. So I had to have a man with Jeanson'skill. As it was, and although he was replying toreallydisjointedremarks,he always found the rightanswers;it looks like a coherentconversation,now.I was really relying on the allusion to Algeria. Itplaces him well. It outragedSollers.Othersjust sayJeanson'san ass, and leave it at that. It's a mistakeif only because he agreed to play a role. Others re-fuse-Sollers is one; I asked him to be in my nextmovie; so is Barthes;I'd asked him to appear inAlphaville.They were afraidthey'd look like fools.That isn't the issue. Francishas the sense to knowthat an image isn't anythingbut an image. All I askpeople to do is listen. Startby listening.I was afraidI'd hear people say what they said when they sawBrice Parain n Vivre sa Vie, that "theywished thatold shit would shut up," or even that I'd meant tomage him look a fool. Because of the allusion toAlgeria,they can't.WhenI interviewsomeone, nde-pendently of the personalreasonsI have for preferring one man to another,the position I take is im-posed by technique. Becausehe'd taughtAnne phi-losophy, I thought at first that I'd film a lesson inphilosophy-a mind giving birth to an idea,promptedby Spinoza or Husserl.But it became inthe end what you see in the movie now: the ideabeing thatAnnewould reveal to him plansof actionhe'd try to dissuade her from, but that she'd go

A taped interview by Jacques Bontemps, Jean-Louis Comolli,Michel Delahaye,and JeanNarboni,Cahiersdu Cinema#194 (October 1967) pp. 13-26,66-70; reprinted by permission. Slightly abridged- omissionsavailablefromtranslator.


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GODARD 21ahead with it anyway. To know whether that allexistsonly in fiction is anotherquestion;it's hardtosay;whenyou see yourown photo,do you sayyou'rea fiction?To have aninterestingdebateon thiswholething you'd have to have Cervoni, say, for the oneside and somebody from the Cahiers Marxistes-Leninistes for the other. Or Regis Bergeron andRene Andrieu. They'd cover each other with shitfor a start;but they might, still, come up with some-thing in the end; but only if they'd agreed to startwith filmbefore they finallyget into it.The reaction from the Marxist-Leninistswasn'tthe one you'dexpected.No, it wasn't.They didn'tknow what to thinkatthe Chinese Embassy. They were really put out.Theirbig complaintwas that Leaud isn't all bloodywhen he unwraps the bandages. They obviouslyhaven't understood.That doesn't mean, of course,that they'rewrong;but, if they'reright, they'rerightat the firstremoveand not the second,orvice-versa.They were afraid,too, the Sovietsmighttakeadvan-tage of Henri (a characterwho for a good many isfar moreconvincingthanI ever thoughthe'd be) tojustify their own position. They weren't too far offthe mark: AndreGorz (Henri reads some passagesfrom his book Socialismedifficile in the firstshot)was telling me it was "the firsttime he'd reallylikedone of my movies; it was clear, coherent;the con-crete triumphsover the abstract,et cetera." I guessI didn't make it clear enough that the charactersaren'tmembersof a real Marxist-Leninist ell. Theyought to have been Red Guards.I'd have avoidedcertainambiguities.The real activists-the kids whopublish the Cahiers Marxistes-Leninistes;hey im-pressyou with their real,deep commitment-maybewouldn't have been as annoyed by it as they were.Because they shouldn'thave been. It's a superficialreaction,I think,not too far different,when you getdown to it, from the kind of reaction t got from thecollaboratorson Le Figaro: "It's ridiculous! Theysay they want to make a revolution. Look wherethey'regoing to make it-in a plush bourgeoisflat."Though this is saidin the movie itself, quite clearly.Canyou explainthissortof misunderstanding?People still don't know how to hear and see amovie. That'swhat we need to be workingon now.For one thing, the people who have training inpoliticshardlyever are trained n filmtoo, and vice-versa. My trainingin politics came out of my workin film; I think it's almost the first time that everhappened. Even if you think of a man like LouisDaquin, you realize all he's doing is coming to filmwith an education he's gotten elsewhere;a poorone

at that. As a result, the movies he makes are justfair;they aren'tthe good ones he mighthave made.All right, what can I say for my movie from thispoint of view? I can say I thinkit quite clear that itviews the two girlswith sympathy-with somethinglike tenderness even; that it's they who form thesupportfor a certainpolitical line; and, finally, thatyou have to startwith these two girlsif you'regoingto understand its conclusion. It's anyway ChouEn-lai's.They haven'tmade a GreatLeap ForwardThe Cultural Revolution is only the first step inanotherLong Marchten thousandtimeslongerthanthe first. If you now apply this conclusion to thepersonalcases, the characterplayed by Anne Wia-zemsky, prepared as she is for it, is bound to gofarther.So is the characterplayed by Juliet BertoLeaudreallygoes a long way: he finds the rightkindof theater. Henrimakes a choice; he decides for thestatus quo; he sides with the French CommunisParty;he's at a standstill,somewhereinside himself-the fixed-frameshot, the absence of cutting in-side the shot characterizesthis. As I view it, then,he's cut himself off from all the real problems-but,I repeat,only if in judging a movie you startwith afilmic analysis-it can be a "scientifically" r a "po-etically" filmic analysis, but it's got to be a filmicanalysis-and not the fictional or the political plot.Kirilov is the only one who really fails. This is allquite clear. Anyhow, it's the Third World thatteaches the others the real lesson. The only character in the movie who's reallybalancedis the youngblack, I think. I wrote his speech too; it's coherentthough it too is in fact made up of fragments: aparagraph from the preface of Althusser's PourMarx,quotations from Mao, clippings from GardeRouge. Of course, though it's coherent, there's stilsomethingto it that'sslightlyunsettling;Pierre Daixhas pointed it out: the questions they askhim haveless to do with the situationthey find themselvesinthan with much more general problems. Still, thisyoung militant agreed to be filmed, to use his reaname, and to make the slightly peculiar speech I'dwritten for him. But we're talking now like men ofthe same world-we might say the same cell. Theone really interesting point of view here would bethe view from the outside-the way it would look tothe Cuban movie-makers,for example. There's areal gap between film and politics. The men whoknow all about politics know nothing about filmand vice-versa.So, I say it over and over again, theone movie that really ought to have been made inFrance this year-on this point, Sollersand I are incomplete agreement-is a movie on the strikes at


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22 GODARDRhodiaceta.They are typical-much more instruc-tive than the strikes at Saint-Nazaire,say, because,viewed in relation to a much more "classical"kindof strike (I'm not takinginto accountthe hardshipsthey involved), they are,properlyspeaking,modernin the way the strikers'culturaland financialgriefsinteract. The thing is, once again, the men whoknow film can't speak the language of strikes andthe men who knowstrikesarebetterat talkingOurythan Resnais or Barnett. Union militants have re-alized that men aren'tequal if they don't earn thesame pay; they've got to realizenow that we aren'tequalif we don'tspeakthe samelanguage.Two or three yearsago, you told us you thoughtit extremelyhard to make political movies: there'dhave to be as many points of view as there werecharacters, and an "extragalactic"viewpoint aswell, to include them all. How do you feel about itnow?I don't thinkso, now. I've changed.I thinkyou'reright to favor the correctview at the expenseof thewrong views. The "elegant"Left would say that'sanother one of the Little Red Book's truisms-though I don't think they are truisms.If you'renotcarryingout a correctpolicy, you're carryingout awrong policy. When I told you that, I was thinkingthat you were obliged to be objective-the way thepress is "objective":you pay everyoneequal atten-tion-or, as they put it, "democratic."But in thesketch I've made for Vangelo 70 it's put quiteplainly that, on the one hand, thereis what you call"democracy,"on the other, revolution; that's it;that's all.How do you feel now about the movie in whichyoufirstgot intopolitics,Le Petit Soldat?It's okay for what it was. I mean, it's the onlymovie a man born a bourgeois and just beginningto make movies could have made if he wanted toget into politics. The proofis that Cavalierused theexact same theme when he made his movie onAlgeria.There justaren'tthat many.It's close to thetheme of some pre-warnovels, Aurelian or ReveuseBourgeoisie-film lagged so far behind life. It's toobad nobody else made his own movie about it-the undergroundJeansonorganized,or the FrenchCommunistParty.They'd have been hard to make,of course. But, once again, if I didn't know what Ineeded to be saying in my movie, the ones who diddidn't know how to say it in movies. My movie'sall right in so far as it's film; it's wrong for every-thingelse; which means t'sjustaverage.Let's go back to the line that concludes La Chi-noise. It's put in the simple, preteritepast and pro-nounced in a "distant"tone of voice. Mightn't it

risk, as a result, making us think everything thatprecedes t a phantasy,a day-dream?It's a simple, not a complicated past. The toneisn't "distant": t's the tone of voice Bresson'shero-ines always have. As for it being a "phantasy,"t'spreciselybecause she's realized so much that Vero-nique will be able to make it somethingmore thana day-dream.Besides,the tone in which she says theline is soft; it's calm, like the Chinese. I was reallyimpressed at the Chinese Embassy by how softlythey speak. It's the tone of a final report. She re-alizes she hasn't made a Great Leap Forward.Justone timid step in advance-though she has, in fact,already seen lots of action; she's gone so far as tokill the man who "never wrote Quiet Flows theDon!"A movie on the strikes at Rhodiacetawould haveled to a quite differentkindof realisation ..Yes, it would. But if it were made by a movie-maker, it wouldn't be the movie that should havebeen made. And if it were made by the workerthemselves-who, from the technical point of view,could very well make it, if somebody gave them acamera and a guy to help them out a bit-it stillwouldn't give as accuratea picture of them, fromthe culturalpointof view, as the one they give whenthey're on the picket-lines. That's where the gaplies.The movie-makerhas to learn how to be their

relief.Yes, he has to learnhow to take his place in theline. Learnhow to pass the word along, a new way,to others.In La Chinoise, film assumes so many, such di-verse forms that they might cancel each other outThe thing is, I used to have lots of ideas aboufilm. Now I don't, none at all. By the time I mademy second movie, I no longer had any ideas whatfilm was. The more moviesyou make, the moreyourealizethat all you have to work with-or against,itcomes down to the same thing-is the preconceivedideas. That'swhy I think it's a crime that it isn't aman like Moullet whom they hire to make movieslike Les Adventuriersor Deux Billets pour MexicoThe way it's a crime that Rivette's being forced-he now after all the others who've been exploitedby the Gestapoof economicand aestheticstructureerected by the Holy Production-Distribution-Exhbition Alliance-to reduce a statement five hourlong to the sacrosancthourand a half.Do you think you've made any discoveries infilm?One: what you must do to be able to make asmooth transitionfrom one shot to the next, given


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GODARD -Anne Wiazemskyand Jean-LucGodard duringshooting ofLA CHINOISE.

two differentkinds of motion-or what's even hard-er, a shot in motion and a motionlessshot. Hardlyanyoneever does it, because they hardlyever thinkof doing it. So, you can join any one shot and anyother: a shot of a bicycle to a shot of a car, say, or ashot of an alligatorto a shot of an apple ... Peopledo do it, I guess,but prettyhaphazardly. f you editnot in terms of ideas, the way Rosselliniedits thebeginning of India-that poses quite differentprob-lems-but in termsof form... when you edit on thebasis of what's in the image and on that basis only. .. not in termsof what it signifiesbut what signi-fies it, then you've got to start with the instant thepersonor thing in motion is hidden or else runsintoanotherand cut to the next shot there.If you don't,you get a slight jerk.If you want a slight jerk,fine.If you don't, there's no other way to avoid it. Thewomen who do my cutting can do it all by them-selves, now. I hit on it in A Boutde Souffle and I'vebeen usingit systematicallyeversince.Yousaid you don't have any ideasaboutfilmnow.Butit'sstill verymuch there in La Chinoise.It's eventhematic ..It asksquestionsaboutfilmbecausefilm is begin-ning to ask itself questions.I don't see anywayhowI could have kept it from coming into the movieless than it does-though it tends in effect, paradox-ically, to narcissism.In this sense, the camera thatfilmed itself in a mirror would make the ultimatemovie.As in yoursketchforLoindu Vietnam?No, not entirely.There wasn't any other way todo it, there.It had to be pushedto justthat extreme.Becausewe are all narcissists,at leastwhen it comesto Vietnam;so we might justas well admitit.

Yourcharacters hink the Sovietcommunistshave"betrayed"Marxism.Do youthinkso too?I've made a movie I call La Chinoise,in which Iadopt, againstthe point of view of the FrenchCom-munist Party, the point of view of the writings ofMao Tse-tung or the Cahiers Marxistes-LeninisteI repeat,it is film that'simposedthe directionI take,which explains why the Cahiers Marxistes-Leninistes can accuse it of being "leftist"and why L'Hu-manite Nouvelle can even attack it for being a"fascist provocation."But, even if there is sometruth in these opinions, it's still not quite that sim-ple; for, insofar as it's a question of film, the ques-tion's been poorlyframed.How do you explain the impact the revisionisHenri'sstatementhashad on a good many?I hadn't foreseen t, but it makes sense to me now.At one point, four gang up against one. That's allIf you'd film Guy Mollet one against four, it's GuyMollet,thatstupidass,who as the underdog s goingto get all the sympathy.Henri's the only one of the five who explainhimself completely.No, you're wrong. People thinkhe's the only onewho explainshimself"completely."The othersdon'need to, to the extent that things arejust that muchclearerfor them. Youhave to takeinto account,toothat people are apt to favor the guy whose viewsthey prefer; that, in any case, they'reincapable ofbeing good listeners; and that they don't, in addi-tion, ever attempt to make a final accounting ofwhat they'veheard the characters ay.Renoir has already asked what immediate effecfilm might have. He's remarked hat the war brokout justafterhe'dmadeLa GrandeIllusion-a movie


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24 GODARDin behalf of peace.Exactly. Film hasn't the slightest effect. Theythought, once, that L'Arrivie du Train en Garewould scare people out of their seats. It did-thefirst time, but never again. That's why I've neverbeen able to understand censorship, not even itsontological grounds.It seems to be based on a no-tion that image and soundhave an immediate effecton the way peoplebehave.Though you can't really trace the influence animageexerts...Correct.But, then again,no moreandno less thanthe effects any of the rest might have-in otherwords,no morethanyou can the effectsof the wholething. Because everythingexerts some influence. Ifyou leave out thatpartof film thatpeople call "tele-vision,"we could say thatfilm"has the influence"ofscientificresearch, heater,orchambermusic.

Does thisdiminishyourconfidence n film?No, not at all. But you've got to realize that themillions of people who've seen Gonewith the Windhave been no more influencedby it than the manyfewer who've seen Potemkin. There've been someattemptsto blamefilmforjuveniledelinquency.Butthe peoplewho'vetriedit don't seemto have noticedthat in precisely the same period that juvenile de-linquency was on the rise in the USA, movie-at-tendance was droppingoff sharply.The sociologistshaven'teven begun to studythe question.The firstshotsyou'veever made of the ruralscenecome in La Chinoise: the two shots of the country-side that remarkson the farm-problemaccompanyoff ...Yes. L'Humaniticalled them picture-postcards.don't know. All I can say is, as soon as we saw ameadow, a cow, and some chickens,we stoppedthecar and shot some footage. Then we turnedaroundand drovehome. I don't see anythingwrongin that.I had to have these shots,becauseYvonne had comeup from the country,and because one of my char-actershad a couple of thingsto sayaboutruralprob-lems.The characterJuliet Berto plays is new for yourfilm.I wanted something besides Parisians.I wantedsomeone who'd come up from the country, so Icould illustrate anotherof the vices of our society:centralization.Someone, too, who in contrastto theothers has nothing, who's dispossessed. Someonesincere, who has a feeling there's something theirlittle groupcan do. She has access throughthem tothe culture that's been refused her. She used tothink it dropped from the skies. Then she started

reading the papers. Now she's selling them. It's afirst step.In the travelingshot alongthe balcony duringthetheoretical presentations,the division of space bythe three windows divides the " class" into threegroups: "professor,""pupils," and Yvonne, themaid, who's shining shoes or washing dishes thewhole time.I had to show that even for those who'd like tolive without them, social classes still exist. It's justat thatmomentyouhear someoneasking,"Willclassstrugglealwaysexist?"The first two categories-"professor"and "stu-dents"-can still relate, interact. But the third iseffectivelykeptto the side.But it's only physically,not mentally,that she's"forbidden" a part in the discussion. Or else it's"tactically":because at the end of the movie she'sno longer forbiddento take part in it all. For onething, she's voted. There's no doubt she discoverthat it's shewho, in the finalanalysis,hascome muchcloser to the others than they have to her personareality-which they should have explored,but theyhaven't; they've put if off. So, of all the characterit's the little farm-girlwho covers the most groundThen comesLeaud,thenAnne,thenHenri.The movie is made up of a series of short se-quences that seem to be quite independent of oneanother.It's the kind of movie that's made in the cuttingI shot self-contained sequences, in no particulaorder;I put themin orderafterwards.Does thatmeanit mighthavebeendiferent?No, it doesn't. There was an order, a continuitythat I had to find. I think it's the one that's in themovie. We shot it ... in the orderthat we shot in!Though as a rule I shoot the sequencesin order,insome kind of continuity; I mean, with some clearidea of the movie's chronologyand its logic-evenif I've found myself having to change the orderofwhole sequences. This is the firsttime the order inwhich I shot a movie presupposednothing. It hap-pened, of course, that I'd know right when I shotthem that two different shots would go together-two shots in the same discussion,for example;butnot always . . . For the most part, they were inde-pendent. The linking came later. So they aren'independent now; they're at least complementarif not also coherent.That was the point of view on which you relied?Was it some notion of a purely logical kind of co-herence? Or was it emotional?Or was it simply avisual coherence?


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GODARD 25Logical. Always. But logic can be conveyed in athousandways. Let's take an example. One of thetexts in the presentation s a speech of Bukharin's.Right after it's read there comes a title: "Bukharinmade this speech." Next, you see a photo of Bu-kharin'saccuser. Of course, I could have used a

photo of Bukharinhimself. But I didn't need to:you'd just "seen"him in the personwho reads thespeech. So, I had to show his adversary:Vichynski-and, eventually, Stalin. Okay: photo of Stalin. Andbecause it's a young manwho speaks n the nameofBukharin, the Stalin in the photo is young. Thattakes us then to the time when the young Stalin wasalreadyat odds with Lenin. But by that time Leninwas married. And one of Stalin's greatest enemieswas Lenin's wife. So, right after the photo of theyoung Stalin: photo of Ulianova. That'squite logi-cal. What has to come next? Well, it's revisionismthat toppled Stalin. So, next, you see Juliet readingan ad in France-Soir:Soviet Russia s busy publiciz-ing Tsaristmonuments.Right afteryou see the menwho in their youth killed the Tsar. It's a little likea theorem that presented itself as a puzzle. Youhave to see which pieces fit. You've got to use in-duction, feel your way, deduce. But, in the finalanalysis, there's only one possible way to fit themtogether, even if you have to try several things tofind it.So what you do when you edit is work that mostmovie-makersdo in theirshooting-scripts.In a sense, yes. But it's work that just isn't in-terestingif you do it on paper.Becauseif it's paperwork you like, I don't see why you make movies.On this point, I'm in agreement with Franju: assoon as I've imagined a movie, I considerit made:I can more or less tell it; so why should I go aheadand shoot it? Oh, to do right by the public, I guess:Franju says it's "so the public has something tochew on." He says somethinglike this: "When I'mdone with my eight hundred pages, I really don'tsee what else I've got to do. So they want me toshoot it. Okay. I shoot it. But it's all so depressing,I have to get drunkfirst."There's just one way toavoid that: don't write scripts.So it's as if you shoot in the dark, but in com-plete freedomtoo?No, that isn't it. It's only in shooting that youfind out what you've got to shoot. It's the samething in painting: you put one color next to an-other. Because you make film with a camera, youcan just as easily get rid of the paper. Unless youdecide to do what McLarendoes-and he's one ofthe greatest men working in film-and write your

moviesrighton the stock.So when you shoot it's as if you collect a lot ofstuffyou have to sortlater...No, it isn't. It's not just "a lot of stuff."If it's a"collection," it's a collection that always has aparticularend in view, a definite aim. And it isn'tjust "any" movie: it's always a particularmovie.You "collect" only the stuff that can meet yourneeds. It's almost the reverse for my next movie:the structure'sall there; it's entirely organized.AllI had for La Chinoise were the details, lots of de-tails I had to find how to fit together. I've got thestructure or Week-end,but not the details. It's sortof frightening: what if I don't find the right ones?What if I can'tkeep my promise-because, afterall,for the money they give me, I promise to makethem a movie. No, that's all wrong. You shouldn'think about work in terms of a debt or a duty-inthe bad sense of the word; you should think aboutit in termsof some normalactivity: leisure,life, andbreathingevenly; the tempo has to be right.One of yourcharacters ays that Michel Foucaulthas confused words and things. Do you share hisopinion?Oh God, the Reverend Doctor Foucault! Thefirst thing I did was read the first chapter in hislatest book, the analysisof Velasquez'las MeninasI skippedthroughthe rest of it; I picked up a littlehere and there-you know I can't read. Some timelater I was at Nanterre, looking for locations. Intalking to students and professors here, I began toappreciate the real inroads the book had beenmaking in the academic establishment. So I wentback to it again, with this in mind. It began to lookreally debatable. The current vogue for the "hu-manities"in the daily press seems very suspiciousI heard that Gorse had been thinking about making Foucault head of the Radio-Television.I haveto admitI preferredJoanovici.In this connection, how do you view the use oflinguistics n the studyof film?As a matter of fact, I was just talking about itwith Pasolini, at Venice. I had to talk to him be-cause, as I've told you, I can't read, or at least notthe stuff men like him have been writingabout filmI just don't see the point. If it interestshim, I meanPasolini, to talk about "prose film" and "poeticfilm," okay. But if it's somebody else, well . . . IfI read the text on film and death Cahierspublishedin French, I read it because he's a poet and it talksabout death; so, it's got to be beautiful. It's beauti-ful like Foucault's text on Velasquez. But I don'see the necessity. Something else might be just as


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26 GODARDtrue. If I'm not so fond of Foucault,it's becausehe'salways saying, "Duringthis period, people thought'A,B,C'; but, after such and such a precise date,it was thought, rather, that '1,2,3'." Fine but canyou really be so sure? That's precisely why we'retrying to make movies so that future Foucaultswon't be able to make such assertions with quitesuch assurance. Sartre can't escape this reproach,either.And what did Pasolinisay?That I was a stupid ass. Bertolucci agreed, inthe sense that I'm too much of a moralist.But ...Well, I'm still not convinced.It meansyou'regoingto wind up in the kind of "filmology" hey used toteach at the Sorbonne, or even something muchworse.Because,when you get rightdown to it, SamSpiegel's in complete accord with all this stuffabout "prose film"and "poetic film."Though he'dsay that "he's going to make 'prose film': 'poeticfilm' bores the public shitless." It's the same oldthing all over again: people borrowand then dis-tort some interesting ideas; Hitler revisiting Nie-tzsche... I view linguisticsthe way Leclerc might-or, even worse, Poujade.But I still have to agreewith Moullet.At Pesarohe talkedcommonsense..But it's precisely a man like Levi-Strausswhorefuses to make random use of linguistic termi-nology. He uses it only with the greatest caution.I agree. But when I see him use Wyler as anexamplewhen he talks about film, it makes me un-happy. I tell myself that if he, as an ethnologist,prefers the Wyler tribe, I much prefer the Murnautribe. Here's another example: Jean-LouisBaudryhas published an article in Les Lettres Francaises.As I was reading it, I kept saying, "This is reallygood writing! Here's a guy who ought to writesomething on Persona.He'd do a really good job."This thing is, the articleI was readingwas supposedto be an articleon Persona.Metz, too;he'sa peculiarcase. He's the easiest to like of them all: because heactually goes to movies;he really likes movies. ButI can't understandwhat he wants to do. He beginswith film, all right. But then he goes off on a tan-gent. He comes back to film from time to time;he'll poke aroundin it for a bit. But then he's offagain on another track. What bothers me is thathe seems not to have noticed; it's unconscious.Ifit were a question of researchin which film wereonly a tool, I'd see no objection. But if it's filmthat's supposed to be the object of the research,then I don't understand.It's not that there's con-tradiction in what he's doing; it's more like somereal antagonism.

But Metz just isn't interestedin what interestsus.All right. But there'sstill some common groundit's all got to be based on. The way it looks to me,they leave this common ground much too often. Ican understand,in some general sense, the intui-tions Pasolinibegins with; but I don't see the needfor the logical development that follows. If hethinks a shot in a movie of Olmi's is "prosaic"anda shot in a movie of Bertolucci's"poetic,"all right.But, objectively, he could say just the opposite.Their tactics resemble Cournot'swhen he rejectsone whole kind of film because, in his view, it just"isn'tfilm"; so, he's forced to rejectFord; but onlybecause he can't tell Ford from Delannoy! That'snot in the least enlightening. This all brings tomind Barthes'recentbook, the book on fashion. It'simpossible to read, for one simple reason: Barthesreads things he ought to be seeing and feeling in-stead:it's somethingyouwear,so it's got to be some-thing you live. I don't thinkhe's reallyinterestedinfashion: it isn't fashion as such that attractshim;it's some kind of dead languagethat he can decode.You had the same kind of thing at Pesaro.Barthesscolded Moullet the way a father scolds his kids.But we're the sons of a filmic language; there'snothing in the Nazism of linguistics we have anyuse for. Notice: we always come back to how hardit is for us all to be talkingabout "the same thing."The people who publish Tel Quel seem capable ofmakingsome reallybasic discoveries n science andliterature.But as soon as it's film, somethingseemsto elude them. Men who know film reallywell talkabout it in quite different terms-whether it's youon Cahiers or Rivette and I when we're talkingabout the movies that have just come out or thepeople on Positif when they're talking about JerryLewis or Cournot when he says of Lelouch that"it isn't a questionof 'feeling,'but it isn'ta questionof 'thinking', either." This reminds me again ofthe talk I had with Sollers. He reproachedme fortalking "in examples.""He said I kept saying "it'the same thing as" or it's like." But I don't talk"in examples."I talk in shots, like a movie-makerSo I just had no way to get him to understandmeI'd have had to makea movie we could have talkedabout afterwards.What it signifies on the screenfor him is maybe what "signifies t" for me. There'got to be something right there that we've got toclear up; it's probablypretty simple, too. It's some-what similarwith painting: if Elie Faure moves usit's because he talks about a painting as if he weretalking about a novel. Somebodyshould finally getaroundto translating he twenty volumesof Eisen-


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GODARD 27stein that nobody's read: he'll have dealt with itall in very different erms. He beganwith technique,too, the very simplest problems,so he could get onto the hardest. He goes from the travelling to N6theater so that he can get back to explaining theOdessa Steps. The place to look for an ideology isin a technique. The way Regis Debray finds therevolution in Latin America in the guerrilla. Theonly thing is, the ideology of film has so decayed,it's so rottenthat it's harderhere to make a revolu-tion than anywhereelse. Film is one of the thingsthat existsin purely practicalterms. You'llfind thathere, too, the economic forces at work have laiddown an ideology of their own that has, little bylittle, eliminated all the rest. The others are begin-ning to re-emerge, right now; some of the bestare among them. In this connection, a lot of thestuff Noel Burch has written is very interesting.What he has to say about raccords s strictlyprac-tical. Youhave a feeling they'rethe view of a manwho's done it himself, who's thought about what isinvolved in doing it-a man who has come to cer-tain conclusions on the basis of his physical han-dling of film.Well, all you'dneed to get it all downin a orderly list is some serious, well-organizedteam-effort.The best work a new nation could doto get started is something along those lines. Allthey've got to do is buy some good movies, starta film library, and study movies. They can makethem later. They can learn while they're waiting.Before getting yourself involved with what the lin-guists call a "scientific"analysis of film, you'd dobetter to list the scientific facts of film. Nobody'sdone it. Though it still could be done: the projec-tions at the Grand Caf6 weren't that long ago;Niepce's first plates are still at Chalon. But if youwait too long, you wdn't be able to do it. Moviesdisintegrate.Even books fall apart.Moviesfall aparta lot faster.In two hundredyearsyou won'tbe ableto find a single one of our movies.There'llbe a fewbits and pieces-of bad movies as well as the good:the laws to protectthe good movies still won'thavebeen made. So, the art we're working in is reallyshort-lived. When I started to make movies, Ithought film something that lasts forever. Now Ithink it something really short-lived.So the incompatibility in the language of thewriters and movie-makers s just as severe as it isfor movie-makersand the strikersat Rhodiaceta-though the writers have already had a good dealto sayaboutfilm.Well, if they have, it's often only because moviessometimes refer to literary forms or simply justcite literary exts.

Do you think it's your use of collages that leadsAragonto writeaboutyou?Maybe it's the digressions that have attractedhim: the fact that there's someone who uses themas digressions,besides as a structuraldevice. In anyevent, Aragon s a poet, which meansthat anythinghe has to say is beautiful. If you don't talk aboutfilms in poetic terms,then you've got to be talkingabout it in scientific terms. We haven't reachedthat point yet. Notice this one simple fact: you goto a theater to see a movie; you never ask why;though thereis simplyno reasonwhy moviesshouldbe shown in theaters. This in itself is revealingOf course, they way things are, you've got to havetheaters. But they shouldn't be more than some-thing like a deconsecratedchurch or a track field:you should hold onto them;people will go a theaterto see an occasionalmovie; there'll be a day whenthey'll want to see a movie on a big screen;or likethe way an athlete will go out to train by himselfin the middle of the week; he wants to be far fromthe frenzy, the racket, the drugs of the weekendmeets. Ordinarily,you should be able to see moviesat home, on a television set or a wall. It's feasible,but nobody's doing anything about it. For a longtime, now, the factories ought to have had screen-ing-rooms;someone should have investigatedwhatincreasing the size of TV screens involves, practi-cally. Nobody has. They're all scared.

Wiazemsky and LUaud: LA CHINOIsE.


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28 GODARDDo you think there is a connection between theways film is distributed and exhibited-theaters,chains,and so on-and its aesthetics?If these conditions were to change, everythingelse would change, too. A movie is subject today toan unbelievable number of really arbitraryrules.A movie is supposed to last an hour and a half.A movie is supposed to tell a story. All right. Amovie tells a story.We all agree. The only thing is,we don't agree on what a "story"s, what it's "sup-posed" to be. You see, today, that the silents hadimmeasurablymore freedom than the talkies-or,at any rate, what they turned the talkies into. Takeas unimaginativea directoras Pabst: he gives youa feeling that he's playing a grand.A movie-makertoday who has no more than Pabst's talent, if heanalyzeshis own case correctly,has to feel that he'splaying not much more than a toy. It's all a

state of mind. For example, when someone'sbuild-ing a theater,he never takes the trouble to ask theadvice of a cameramanor a director. And nobody'sever going to ask advice of a viewer. So, as a result,the three most interested parties never have achance to make their desires known. It's true theybuild houses this way too. But the guys who designtheaters are always the worst they can find. Andthey're never the ones who go to see movies.What could we do, at short range, to change it?The best we can do is attack the technicalprob-lems, everything that results from the economicforces at work in film: production, processing,pro-iection . . . The young men who are just gettingtheir start in film don't have to know everythingabout it. They can get along very well withoutknowing anything about Lumiere or Eisenstein.They'll run into them sooner or later themselves.The way it isn't until he was thirty that Picassogot onto African art. And if he hadn't just then,he'd have painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon afew years later. He'd have done somethingelse inthe meantime. The young men have all the luck:they can always startover. People have been doinga lot they can benefit from, even if it's been fairlyhaphazard, disorganized. They need to make along list, get everything on it, the little things aswell as the most important:everythinginvolved infilm that just won't do. Everything: from theater-seats-the worst are in the art-houses-to editing-tables. I bought an editing-table recently. It didn'ttake me long to discover that nobody had askedthe right questions. They'remanufacturedby menwho've never done any editing. I'm holding ontoit. I'm hoping I'll get the money to have it rebuilt,so thatit will workright.

In what sense has it been badly conceived?The way they're manufactured s the result of aparticular aesthetics. They've been conceived aslittle projectors. That's fine for men who thinkediting a few pencilled notes: the director showsup Monday morning;he tells his cutter where tomake cuts and splices; she takes the footage offthe editor and does the work she's been told to doat another table. Or, if it's someone like Grangieror Decoin she worksfor-they justcan'tbe botheredshe'll do the whole thing herself. But in any case,the real editing gets done somewhere else, not atthe editing-tableitself. But, there are movie-maker-Eisenstein's the first, Resnais is the second, I'mthe third-who do their editing, each in his ownway, of course, right at the editing-table, with theimage and against the sound. The problems youhave with handling the film are completely dif-ferent. I keep winding the film back and forthI make splices without ever taking the reels off.And if the table hasn't been manufacturedwithwork of this sort in mind, it's not easy to do it.Again, it comes down to a simple economic gim-mick that all by itself bears out a whole ideologyIf that's how they manufactureediting-tables, it'sbecause three-fourths of the people editing filmedit this way. Nobody'sever told the manufacturerto do it differently. I use editing as an examplebut the same kinds of thing turn up everywherelse. If you're trying to make revolutionarymovieson a reactionaryediting-table, you're going to runinto trouble. That's what I told Pasolini: his lin-guistics is a shiny, new, reactionaryediting-tableBesides, the moremoviesI make,the moreI realizejust how precariousa thing a movie is: how hardit is just to get it made, and then how hard it is toget it shown-in other words, just how distortedthe whole thing is. If problems ike these were eversolved-though I don't think they'll ever be solvedin the West-then we just might discoversomenewways of working-ways to make film that's reallynew. Things as new as the discoveriesmade in thevery firstyears of film.Everythingwe're using nowwas invented in the firstten or twenty years of thesilents. Technique was moving right in step withproductionand distribution, hen. Right now, we'velost sight of the ways they'reconnected.Everythinggoes its own way-if you think it's going anywherat all. The only thing I'd want to write for Cahiernow-it would take time to do it; I'm always running into something else to say on the subject-would be somethingabout the ways to get film ofto a complete new start. I'd discuss it in terms ofthe problemsa young Africanwould have to face


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GODARD 29I'd tell him, "All right, your nation has just wonits freedom. Now that you're free to have a filmof your own, you and your comrades have beenasked to get it started. Okay. Get Jacquin andTenoudji out of your theaters."-You know, evenin Guinea, the most revolutionaryof the new na-tions, the theaters all still belong to Comacico.And,though the Algerianshave nationalized their film-industry,they'vehanded it right back to the distri-butors, which means that in no time at all it'll beback in private hands again; it'll be just the way itwas before. "You'vedecided to have a film of yourown, to make film of your own. This means thatyou're not going to import any more trash like LaMarquise des Anges. Book Rouch's movies, ormovies made by some young Africanhe's trained-anything that interests you. If you work for DeLaurentiis,don't go to him. Make him build studiosfor you here. In other words, since you have it allstill to do, turn it to your advantage.Make a thor-ough investigationof everything that's involved inthe production and distribution of movies. Buildor rebuild your theaters-or what might replacethem in the eyes and the hearts of your militantcountrymen."Things like that. It's impossible tolist the mistakesthat have to be corrected. You'dhave a list as long as the lists in Rabelais or in Mel-ville. But you'd have to try, if you really wantedto redefine ilm.To get backto Algeria:They shoulduse the money they've made in co-productiondealsto build processing plants of their own, not infinancing (aside from a couple of things like LeVent des Auris) Jacquin'smovies: I know it's hardto believe, but half the money in Le Soleil Noir isthe Algerians'.They haven't even got their ownprocessing plants: they send their newsreels toFrance or Italy, on Air France or Alitalia; theydon't trustAirAlgeria.It's sometimesonly too obvious that movie-mak-ers in the new nations imitate the very worst inour film when they're makingtheir own firstshorts.Of course it's also an individual, a mental prob-lem. But if you want to get off to a start,you've gotto base yourself on a non-mental thing-on tech-nique. The new mentality can develop out of it.Obviously,things are hard, everywhere.The direc-tor of the Algerian Film Center is convinced he'sbetter off having Jacquin or Tenoudji distributehis movies. That's the tragedyof the Third World:it's always in a corner, always in a jam for money.Everyone's in league against it, the way they'veall ganged up againstthe unemployed.The Algeri-ans produce Italian movies instead of movies byyoung Algerians. They did give them some film,

but the kids used it to make irresponsiblejunk.They'd do better, in such a case, to put a stop totheir production for a time and give the kids theopportunityand the time to do a little homeworkresearch,and to see as many good movies as possi-ble. The crisiswill take care of itself. Or they couldput them to work in television or in the processingplants and the sound studios. It would be all thatmorepracticalbecauseno director,anywhere,reallyknows what goes on in an editing-roomor a filmlab. Everybody in film ought to get some trainingin the sector closest to his own. Cameramen, or ex-ample. They learn a little in school, but then theynever go on to get some trainingin the film labs.As a result, the cameraman and the lab are neverable to reach an understanding.Let's say you shoota movie with a man who's a real master of light.Let's say he's as familiar with Renoirs as withRembrandts.Fine. The print will be timed by aman who hasn't the faintest idea what lighting is.No more Renoir'sthan Rembrandt's.So, as a re-sult, the print will be too dark,or too light, but inany case flat. Simply because the lab technicianneither knows what he can nor what he should do.Orjust the opposite.I justremembered hat Matraswhen he was in Madrid,spent his time sending hiswife Mexichromepostcards instead of looking atpictures in the Prado. You run into the same thingat every level in film. Nobody's really been edu-cated. It's a question of education. Right here inFrance, there's all you'd need to make really goodmovies. But the men who are supposed to be di-recting the workare lazy bums or highway-robbersThey employ honest men, but they give them notraining and no responsibilities.The people whodo the actual work thinkthey'redoing it right.But,the thing is, they're imprisonedin a whole systemof economic and aesthetic preconceptions. Whatyou have to do, then, is explain it to them. Forexample, you can explain to a projectionist thatthere just isn't any point in closing and openingthe curtains: filmisn't theater ... And if projectionists are so badly paid, it's because no one thinksthe work they do is work of any real importanceThere's as little respect for them as there is forthe grips or the sound-men.A grip knows a gooddeal. He can, often, talk much better sense aboutfilm than his director.But he "doesn't count."Andas for the men who managethe sound, they'repaideven worse than the men who make the imageWhy? It's a result,once again, of a whole ideologySo they say, "Why should we pay the sound-manas much as we pay the director of photographyFilm is the art of the image!"That's all wrong.But


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30 GODARDthe sound-man continues to get half what thecameraman gets-and, what's worse, to think itfair. If we start talking about distribution,we runright into another problem: the distributors.Filmgot off to a start without them. All it took was acameramanand a director.What did Lumieredo?He took his movies right to the guy who ran theGrand Cafe. All right. But since then, distributionhas become a trade. The middlemen-the distribu-tors-are lazy. They don't make a move. But theystill keep on saying (and it's as much for them-selves as it is for us), "You can't do without us. It'sall got to go throughus." But the only reasonthatthere are "distributors" t all is that everyone elseis too lazy. The exhibitorswon't move an inch tofind the product to sell. The producerswon't movean inch to take it to them. As soon as that happens,they need the third man-who robs them blind inthe end...You want to: make differentmovies.But to be ableto make them, you have to work with people youdespise and dislike, instead of with people you likeand admire.The industry'srottento the core: fromthe point where the film is processedto the point itmust reach-if it ever gets there-to reach a public.From time to time, of course, there'sa hint thingsare beginning to move. The Hyeres festival, for ex-ample, isn't ideal, but it's still a lot better thanCannes; and Montreal'sbetter than Venice. You'vegot to keep moving ahead. Film in Canada is aninterestingcase. The National Film Board is a realmovie factory. They're making more movies thanHollywood now. A beautiful set-up. But what hap-pens? Nothing.There'snothing to see. Their moviesnever get shown.One of the firstthingsDanielJohn-son should do is nationalize the theaters n Quebec.In Canada,too,filmis subjectto the imperialism hatprevails everywhere else. Those of us who keeptryingto make moviesdifferentlyhave got to organ-ize a fifth column, attempt to destroy the wholesystem.But some film is alreadybeing made outside thesystem...

Yes, of course. Bertolucci isn't makingAmericanmovies. Neither is Resnais,or Straub,or Rossellini,Neither is JerryLewis. But even this differentfilm,good or bad, is no more than 1/10000 or 1/100000of what'sbeing made.But is there stilla really"American"ilm?No, there isn't. There's a counterfeit that callsitself "American,"but it's only a very poor copy ofwhat it was once.WouldyouworkforanAmericancompanyagain?Yes,I would. If that'swhat I'dhave to do to make

a movie. Or if it gave me a chance to make an ex-pensive movie, like Michael,CircusDog; I mean, amovie for which more money goes into the imagethan into the actors'pockets.In saying this, though,I don't compromisemyself or my view of Americaand the imperialisticpolicies of its giantfilmcompa-nies. In the first place, there are Americans andAmericans,good ones and bad ones. In the secondplace, there, too, theyneed a fifthcolumn.Youmightget it into their heads that they could make differ-ent filmstoo. Youmighteven get them to want to. Ifthe movie you made were a success, you might,little by little, get themto change theirsystemthem-selves. It would be hard. You keep running intotheir imperialismat every level of productionanddistribution.But you've got to hold onto the hope.People can change.Then again,something s on themove in Americaright now. You can see it amongthe blacks and in the oppositionto the war in Viet-nam. And as for film, the universitiesarebeginningto distributemovies;they'returning nto realchainsNew companies are being formed. I sold La Chi-noise to Leacock's.Anyway, the world's a little bitlargerthan America.But if I put the Americansandthe Russians ogether nto the samebag, it's becausetheir systems are almost identical. They both treattheir young movie-makerslike naughty childrenEvery one of the Americanswe really admire gothis start n filmat an earlyage. They'reold now, andthere'snobody there to take over. When Hawksgothis start,he was Goldman'sage now. Goldman'sallby himself.Obviously, hereareyoungmen stillwhodo get into Hollywood,but none of them have any-thing like Hawks's deas. They'vegottenwhat training they have in structures hat areon theirdecline;they haven't had the guts to destroy them. It isn'tin freedomthat they come to film; thoughit isn't inany realpoverty,either,aestheticorotherwise.Theyare neither explorersnor poets. But the men whomade Hollywood were poets-even gangsters,whotookit by forceto dictate theirpoetic law. The moscourageousman in Hollywoodtoday, the only manwho's managed to get out from under it, is JerrLewis. He's the only one in Hollywoodwho's doingsomethingdifferent,who remainsoutsideits categories, its norms, its principles. Hitchcock did for along time. But Lewis is the only man who's makingcourageousmoviesrightnow-and I think he'sawareof it. He can get away with it because of his per-sonal talent.But who else can? NicholasRay is typ-ical of the point Americanfilm has now reachedThe case of the New YorkSchoolisn't encouragingeither. They're already buried. And if it's "underground"film they want to make, it's got to mean


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GODARD 31they'd like to be burieddeeper.I don'tsee why. TheRussians haven't helped Hanoi bomb New York.Why do they want to live underground?There aregoing to be more great American movie-makers.They've already got Goldman, Clarke, Cassavetes.We'll justhave to wait, help them, even push them.I was talking about the universities. Film's beingmade in the universities-or, at least, they're begin-ning to; there didn'tuse to be any film there.That'simportant.Film's got to go everywhere.We shouldlist the places it hasn'tbeen yet and then say thatthat's where it's got to go. If it's not in the factories,it's got to get into the factories.If it's not in the uni-versities, we've got to get it into the universities.If it's not in the brothels, it's got to get into thebrothels. Film has to get away from where it isnow andgo whereit hasn'tbeen yet. ...Where and when you get your start has a lot todo with how you get started. No one in Francehadbeen taking film seriously.Then people turned upwho were saying you had to, that it deservedsomeserious thinking. For the same reasons,we had tosay, too, that there is such a thing as a "work."Idon't think now that there is. That's a point youreach if you pushyourthinkingon artjusta little bitfurther.There is no such thing as a "work," ven ifthere is somethingthat'skept in cans or printedonpaper, not in the way that there are such things asbeings orobjects.But, at the time, thatwas the thingwe had to do first: force it on people that therewas"work,"even if you have to tell them now thatthey'vegot to go a little bit further n theirthinking.In the same way, I'll say too that there is no suchthing as an "author."But to get people to understandin what senseyou cansay that,youhave to tell themover and over again, first, that there's such athing as an "author."Because their reasons forthinkingthere weren'tweren't the right ones. It's aquestionof tactics. ..Aren'tyouincreasinglynfluencedby theater?You've got to do theater in film, I think-mixthings up a little. Mix it all up. Especially the fes-tivals. I think it's absurd that they don't hold themusic and theater festival at the same time as thefilm festivalat Venice. They shouldhave musiconenight, film the next ... You rememberhow it wasat Pesaro: after you'd seen a movie you could goandhearjazz; youhad a really good time.But when you say that, you've begun to attackone of the public's biggest taboos-against the mix-ing of genres.Youbegin to realize the damage donesome thirty or forty years ago when the "theoreti-cians" would decree that something "was theater,not film.."

There are a lot of movie-makersrightnow who'dlike to talk about theater: there's Rivette andL'AmourFou; Bertolucciand others.Persona,Blow-Up, Belle de Jour are part of it, too. And Shake-speare Wallah; that's a beautiful movie. I supposeit means that people who've gotten the feelingthey'retrappedby their meansof expressionwant toget out of it. I'm not talking about Bergman now;he's been doing theaterall his life; he's done moretheater than he's made movies. For a long time,now, I've been wantingto makea didacticmovieontheater,aboutPour Lucrece.At the beginning you'dsee the girlwho'd act the role get out of a cab; she'dbe going to a rehearsal; no, not a rehearsal;she'dbe going in for an audition.Then you'd get into theplay. You'dsee an audition, a rehearsal,a scene inperformance.From time to time, there'd be somecritique of the play itself. Some scenes would bedone two or three times: the actors would makemistakes or the directorwould want to get some-thing justright.You could have the samescene doneby several actors: Moreau, Bardot, Karina couldeach act the same role. And the directorcould re-view the seven or eight great theories of theaterwith the actors: Aristotle, the three unities, thePrefacede Cromwell,The Birthof Tragedy,Brechtand Stanislavsky-butthey'dbe doingit in the play,still. At the end, the girl you saw coming in at thestartwould die: because Lucrecedies; youwouldn'tknow where the fiction stopped, then. A movie likethis would aim to teach an audience what theater s.Readings are just fantastic! When you get rightdown to it, the most fantasticthing you could filmispeople reading. I don't see why no one's done it.Film someone who's simply reading ... The movieyou'd make would be a lot more interesting thanmost of them are. Why couldn't film mean filmingpeople reading really fine books? Why shouldn'you see somethinglike that on TV, especially nowthat people don't read much? And people who cantell good stories,make them up-like Polanski,Gi-ono, Doniol. They could make up stories right infront of a camera. People would listen to them. Ifsomebody'stelling a really good story, you can lis-ten for hours. Film would be going back to thetraditions and role of the Oriental storyteller.Welost out on a lot when we stopped being interestedin storytellers.But the ideology that tells us what aspectacle"is" s so firmlyestablishedthat the peoplewho'dbeen spellboundby the story you'dbeen tell-ing themat the Gaumont-Palacewould come storming out in a rage; they'dsay you'd triedto takethemforfools; they'dsay they'dbeen robbed.But you don't question spectacle itself . .


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32 GODARDNo, I don't. If you look at something,it's a spec-tacle, even if it's just a wall. I've alwayswanted tomake a movie about a wall. If you really look at awall,youwind up seeing things n it.One gets the impressionthat there's an intentionto destroy the image itself at work in your sketchAnticipation, to destroy it as the support for "re-alism."It annoyedme that it was much too easy to iden-tify the actors. When I started shooting it, I stillhadn't thought of anythinglike it. It was only laterthat it occurredto me to give the movie-you couldcall it a "biological"look-like plasma in motion.But plasmathatspeaks.But the minute you do that, you attack an ideathat's almost sacred: the idea that an image in filmis sharp,clean,'"olid"...But an image is always an image, as soon as it's

projected.So I haven't destroyeda thing. Or else,one idea of the image and what it's supposedto be.I never thought of it as destruction . . . What Iwanted was to get inside the image, because mostmovies are made outside the image. What is animage?It's a reflection.What kindof thicknessdoesa reflection on a pane of glass have? In most film,you're kept on the outside, outside the image. Iwanted to see the backof the image, what it lookedlike from behind, as if you were in back of thescreen,not in frontof it. Inside the image. The waysome paintings give you the feeling you're insidethem. Or give you the feeling you can't understandthem as long as you stay outside them. Red Desertgave me the feeling the colorswere inside the cam-era, not out there in front of it. The colors are allin front of the camera in Le Mdpris.You're con-vinced it's the camerathat makesup Red Desert.InLe Mdepris,here is the camera, on the one hand,the objectson the other,outside it. I don't thinkI'dknow how to makeup a movie like his. Except thatI'm beginning to want to. You can see my wantingto in Made in USA. That'swhy people haven'tun-derstood it. The people who've seen it think it'ssupposed to be "representational," ut it's not. Imust have put something over on them, becausethey kept trying to follow it "representationally":they kept tryingto understandwhat was happening.They did keep up with it, quitewell. But they didn'tknow they had: they kept thinkingthey hadn'tun-derstooda thing. It really impressedme that Demywas so fond of Made in USA. I'd always thoughtita movie "in song";La Chinoise s a movie "in talk."The movie Made in USA resemblesthe most is LesParapluiesde Cherbourg.The actorsdon't sing, butthe movie does.

Now that you bring up resemblance,is there aconnectionbetween Personaand your lastfew mov-ies?No, I don't think so. And anyway, I don't thinkBergman ikes my movies too well. I don'tthinkhe'staken anything from me-or from anyone else, forthat matter.Anyway,afterIn a Glass,Darkly,Win-ter Light, and The Silence, he could hardly havemadeanythingbut Persona.Persona s much moredaringstylisticallythanthepreceding movies. The way the narration s "dot-bled,"forone thing ...No, I think the shot you're talkingabout is, aes-thetically, just a continuationor a development ofthe long shot in WinterLightin whichIngridThulinconfesses. But it's much more striking in Personaof course; it's close to formal aggression. It's sostrikingas a formal device that as soon as you seeit you tell yourself"it's so beautiful;I've got to useit in a movie myself."I got the firstshot for my nextmovie when I was seeing Personaagain. I told my-self that what I needed was a fixed-frameshot ofpeople talking about their genitals. But in anothersense, it remindsme of the openingshot in Vivre saVie: I stayed behind the couple during the wholeshot, but I could have gone round in front. Whathe's doing is somethinglike what the interviewsarein my movies; it's very differentin Bergman,but,in the final analysis, it always comes down to thedesireto representa dialogue.Andit has somethingto do with Beckett, too. At one time I'd wanted tofilm Oh! les BeauxJours.I never did-they wantedto use Madeleine Renaud; I wanted to use youngactors.I'd have liked to-I had a text, so all I'dhavehad to do is film it. I'd have done it all in one con-tinuous travelling.We'd have startedit as far backas we had to to get the last line, at the end of anhour and a half, in a close-up. It would have meantjustsomegrade-schoolarithmetic.How do you interpretwhat in Personakeeps re-mindingyouit's a movieyou'rewatching?I didn't understandPersona.Not a thing. Oh, Idid watch it, carefully.This is the way it looked tome: Bibi Anderssonis the one who's ill; it's theother girl who's the nurse. When you get down toit, I guess I always rely on the "realism."So, whenthe husband thinks he recognizeshis wife, I thinkshe's his wife: he's recognized her. If you didn'rely on realism, you'd neverbe able to do anythingIf you were on the street,you wouldn'tdare to getinto a cab-if you'd even risked going out, that is.But I believe in it all. You can't divide it up intotwo; you can't separate the "reality" from the"dream"; t's all one. Belle de Jour's really great


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GODARD 33There are momentswhen it's just like Persona.Yousay, all right, beginning now I'm going to follow itcarefully, so I'll know just exactly where we are;then, all of a sudden, you have to say, damn itlwe're already there: you see you're already in it.It's as if you decided you wouldn't go to sleep sothatyou wouldn'tbe asleep when you went to sleep.That's the problem these two movies pose. For along time now, Bergman'sbeen at a point where it'sthe camera hatmakesthe movie,eliminatingevery-thing that can't become part of the image. Thatought to be axiomaticfor all editing, and not no-tions like "thepieces have to be put togetherin justthe right order,"or "there are rules that must beobserved."You ought, instead, to say that you'vegot to eliminateeverythingyou can say. Even if youhave later to turn t all insideout andsay thatall youcan keep is what is said. That's what Straub, forexample,does. In La Chinoise,it's only what's saidthat I keep. But the result is completely differentfrom Straub's,because it isn't the same thing that'ssaid. Bufiueleliminateseverythingthat is said, sinceeven what's said is there to be seen, too. There'safantasticfreedom n his movie. Youget a feeling thatBufiuel can "play"film the way Bach must haveplayedthe organat the end of his life.How do you view the notionof the "door-to-doortheater"Leaud picks up on at the end of La Chi-noise?I'm afraidit hasn'tbeen understood.I supposeIdidn't make it clear enough. It's not he who's inquestion; t isn'tan individualisticsolution.The wayI'd been thinkingaboutit, I'd have had to show himtogetherwith others.One would have been playinga guitar;one wouldhavebeen singingordrawingonthe sidewalk-the kindsof thingshippies do in frontof cafes. But this time they'd be communistsdoingthem. They'dhave been doing real work: they'dbehaving to choose their text for the given situation,switching from Racine to Sophocles or somethingelse. I really ought to have had more than one do-ing it. There'dhave been times when they wouldn'tknow what to say; they'dhave to talk it over, to de-cide which was the rightresponse.They mightevenstarttalkingto the people watching them,engage inreal dialogue.Insteadof acting theatricaltexts,theycould have recited some Plato. There shouldn't beany restrictions.It's all theater;it's all film; it's allscience and literature.If you'd mix things up a bit,we'd all be a lot better off. For example, the lec-tures in the universities could be given by actors;the professorsspeak like they've got mush in theirmouths,anyway.And you could profitfrom that tolearnhow to speaka text, too,how to readit. It's not

just the conclusionyou reachwhen you come to theend of Descartes' sixth Meditation that counts, orhaving to be able to talk about his system on anexam, but the time it takes to reach its conclusion,the distance you have to go-in other words, theexperience lived in learning about Descartes. I'mnot saying this is the only thing that needs to bedone; but, after all, when thousands of things needto be changed, I think you'd do well to try chang-ing just one or two, insteadof sayingright off, onceand forall, that it's goodor it'sbad.Do actors,like movie-makersor technicians,needmore study?Do they need moretraining?Training,yes. The kind the Americanactorsusedto get. If I were giving a course for actors,I'd givethem physical or intellectual exercisesto do, noth-ing else. I'd tell them, "now you going to somegymnastics"or "you'regoing to listen to this recordfor the next hour." Actors have so many prejudicesin physical and intellectual matters. For examplewhen we were makingDeux ou TroisChoses, Ma-rina Vlady came up to me one day and said, "Whatshould I be doing?Younever tell me." So I told her-she lives in Montfort-L'Amaury-I oldher to walkto wherever we'd been shooting, instead of takinga taxi. "If you reallywant to act well, that'sthe bestthing you can do about it." She thoughtI was put-ting her on, so she didn't do it. I thinkI still hold itagainsther; just a little bit. She might have done itif I'd explained it all. But she'd only have done itonce, and then the next day she'd be expecting meto come up with somethingelse. So it just wasn'tworthexplainingit. I wanted her just to thinkwhatshe had to say. That'sall. Thinkingdoesn't have tomean intellectualizing.If she was supposed to puta cup down on a table, I wanted her to think animage of a cup and an image of a table. Everythingthat's involved in just walking to the locationeveryday would have put her in shapeto move and speakthe way that would have been right for what I wastrying to do. What I asked her to do was a lot moreimportantthan she thought, because to get to thepoint where you can think, you've got to do a fewsimple things just to get yourselfinto shape. Every-one knowsthat a dancer can't dance unless he trainhimself for it every day, does his exercises.But theidea that actorsneed "exercise" oo was alreadyonthe decline amongthe actorsin theater.Film actorhaven't the slightest idea of what kind of exercisethey ought to be doing. They tell themselves thasince they don't have to kick up their legs there'just no point in exercise. Before shootingstarted onLa Chinoise, I asked Jean-PierreLeaud to eat. Igave him the money-I told him he couldn'tspendit


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34 1 GODARDover at the Cinematheque-justso he'd be eating ameal,in peace andquiet, ninetyminutes a day everyday, not readingthe paper, not doing anythingbuteating an ordinarymeal in an ordinaryrestaurant.That's what he needed to do for La Chinoise. Exer-cises like these are a little like a reverse yoga. It'sthe kind of thing the surrealistsused to call "practi-cal exercise."They are needed in every activity, onevery occasion. Actors don't seem to rememberthey're being paid for eight hours of work a day.Justlike factoryworkers.The thingis, as soon as theworker reaches the factory he works-a full eight-hour day; he can't cheat. Actors can and tney do-like a lot of others in the white-collarprofessions.An actor doesn't work an eight-hour day-if onlybecause you can't shoot eight hours straight.All Iask is that he do more work between the takes andless during them. Because, if he's done his workbefore the take,I can be sureit'll be good. It doesn'tdo any good if he has to do his work during thetake. The trouble is that it's the hardestthing thereis to get an actor to do. But even so, when we weremakingLa Chinoisethey got alongprettywell. Theyworked well as a group;together they did just theright kinds of things to keep them in pretty goodshape for shooting. It went a lot smoother thanMasculin-Fe'minin.Obviously, now, everythingI'vebeen saying applies to professionalactors as well.Neither the professionalsnor the nonprofessionalsareprepared o submitto the slightest training.AnnaKarina's ike all the rest on this point. I kept tellingher, all I wanted her to do was, every day, read theeditorial in the paper, Le Figaro or L'Humanit',aloud, calmly. She didn't understandeither. Eventhough little things like this have a direct influenceon one's acting. It's exactly the equivalent of walk-ing for an athlete, scales for a pianist, limbering-upexercisesfor an acrobat.The big problemwith ac-tors in film is that they'reoften so very proud. So,they've got to be taught to be humble, the way thehumble have to be taughtto be proud.It'sas Bressonsays, "give and receive." And from this point ofview, I see no differencebetween the professionalsand the nonprofessionals.There are interestingpeo-ple all over the place. But Bresson alks aboutactorsthe way the Russianstalk about the Chinese.I kepttelling him, "They've all got eyes, mouths, hearts" And he'd keep saying, "No!" If I'd said,"Well . . .when Jouvet was still in his mother'sbelly . . ." he'd have said, "Ohwell, you know ...Predestination!"There's a much largerprobleminvolved in theseexercisesyou've prescribed:it's a problem of edu-cation. For example, the characters n La Chinoise

have all emerged from the bourgeoisie,which hasgiven them the educationthey'vebegunto question.The fact is, it all lies in the way they'vegottentheknowledge they have. Their education is an educa-tion in class. The way they conduct themselves isdeterminedby class; they conduct themselves likemembersof their class. That's all made very clearin the movie, anyway. On the subjectof this "edu-cationin class"thatprevailsherein France,here'sathing I cut out of a paperthe otherday; I'mkeepingit because I'd like to make a movie on Rousseau'Emile. Missoffe-he's our Ministerof Youth,remem-ber-is on record as saying-it's in his White Book-and I quote: "The schoolsmusttranslate he struc-tureof societyinto its programmes:t mustorganize(1) a long and highly intellectual trainingfor chil-dren appointedin the main by their family originsto the highest posts in the directionand administration of society; (2) a shorterand simpler kind ofinstruction or the childrenof workersandpeasantswhose entry into the labor-force, it would seem,requiresno more than a limited training."No com-ment.Tell us somethingabout yourEmile. What will itbe?A modern movie ... The storyof a boy who re-fuses to go to his high-schoolbecause the classes arealways too full. He sets about teaching himself, onthe outside. He observes people, goes to movieslistens to radio, looks at television. Education, justlike filmtoday,is an immenseaccumulationof tech-niques that need to be re-examined,corrected.Ev-erythingneeds re-examination.What'sgoingto hap-pen to the son of a workmanwho decides he wantsan education?Right at the start, he'll find himselfin a jam for money. We always get back to theThirdWorld'sproblems.The whole systemof schol-arships s reallyimmoral.They aresupposedto go tothose who "deserve" hem.All right,who "deservethem?Because the schoolsare recruitingrightnow,just like the army, and the kid who doesn'tanswerthe call just hasn't the right to pass his exam, thosewho "deserve"them turn out to be the ones whoalways come to class, which means, then, the oneswho can always afford to come, who don't have tobe working their way through school. Even if theones who attend every class don't necessarilylearnany more than the ones who miss moreclasses thannot. Then again, no one knows what to do to givepeople the desire or the time to learn. Then againthe teachers are so poorly paid! I don't say it's sim-ple. I'm just saying that there's much too muchthat'stotallyunacceptable,rightfromthe start.Areyou sayingthe problemhas no solution?


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WEEK-END 35No! Because,all the same, it's nothing like it is inFrancein America, Russia,or even Albania.In thefirstplace, they spendmuch moreon education thanwe do. In France, the restrictionsplaced on fundsare the result of deliberate policy. I refer you toMissoffe.And de Gaulle. He's just finished tellingthe Canadiansthat "theyhad a right to form elitesof their own." There's the whole governmentmen-tality, right there. Notice: he was careful to choosehis words. He didn't say, "Youhave a right to trainmoreteachers,moreresearchers."No, he said,"elitesof your own." The thing is, they already have anelite. Quebec doesn't need to be free to have anelite of its own.In eastern-blocnations,it's much easier to get aneducation. But some kinds of training are still re-served for an elite. A thirty-year-oldday-laborercan't ever hope to make movies. He'd have had to

have been to filmschool.The work a day-laborerand an intellectual doare quantitativelybut not qualitatively different.Ve'venever been placedon an equal footing,which

is why we can't say or do anything together. Aworker . . . I have to repeat myself-a workerhasnothing to teach me, nor I him. It ought to be justthe opposite. There ought to be a lot I could learnfrom him and he from me, instead of its being mefrom my colleagues and he from his. That's whysome people today-the Chinese,let's say, or, at anyrate, some Chinese-want to change it. The hopeof changingit isn'tutopian f you'rewilling to reckonnot on a few but on a few hundredyears. Civiliza-tions last a long time. How can we expect the newcivilizationsthatbeganwith Marxismusta hundredand fifty years ago to be accomplishedall at once?It's going to takea thousandyears,maybe two thou-sand.As a matterof fact, the world's last CulturalRev-olution is just two thousand years old. It was theChristianrevolution.It's only just starting to finish up. It's producednothing but reactionaries. The industriesof imageare still its mosttrustedmercenaries.[Translatedby D. C. D.]

JAMES ROY MACBEANGodard's Week-end,

o r t h e S e l f C r i t i c a l C i n e m a o f C r u e l t yWeek-end, in more ways than one, equals"dead-end:" not for Godard, and not for thecinema, but for a particular type of cinema--the cinema of spectacle--which is pushed to its

limit. Future generations (if there are any)may even look back upon Week-end as theterminal point of a particular phase in the de-velopment-or, more literally, the disintegra-tion of western civilization. The point seemsclear: "civilization," as it exists in Week-end,is doomed to devour itself.But Week-end, in spite of its searing in-sights and its sense of the general movement of

history, offers a very selective view. Godard, inthis film, concentrates almost exclusively ontwo of the most flamboyant aberrations of con-temporary life--the bourgeois materialist in hismost aggravated fever of accumulation andconsumption; and his double, the antibourgeois,antimaterialist drop-out from society, whoseonly alternative to the horror of the bourgeoisieis more horror still. "This is a helluva film," re-marks the male lead in Week-end, "the onlypeople you meet in it are sick!" The remark iscrucial to the understanding of the film, forclearly Week-end is the negative and destruc-

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Film Quarterly 1968 Vol 22 n.2

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