Paris In Pictures: New Wave Visions of the Modern City pt. 6

A Modern City



The formal differences between Godard’s approach to modernization in Two or Three Things and Tati’s Mon Oncle are clear: one takes on a lingual, documentary style while the other focuses on visual cues and spatial relations. However, both films feature similarly negative views on modern construction and seem to be of the viewpoint that ‘newer’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘better’. While Godard is preoccupied with the cinema and modernizations effects on language, his assertions that commoditized culture has negatively impacted individualism mirror Tati’s sentiments. Likewise, Tati’s affinity for old time housing and ways of life can be seen in Godard’s demonizing of urban organization and physical growth.

However, neither film is without hope. While Tati’s message may seem bleak, his humor-based approach stands as a silver lining. Likewise, Godard’s playful attempts to render verbal and written language through the cinema act as a call for greater attention to language as a cultural entity. The results are a vision of Paris, a modern city, which is both culturally expanding and aware of its own deficiencies.


WORKS CITED

Barthes, Roland. “Towards a Semiotics of Cinema: Barthes in interview with Michel Delahaye, Jacques Rivette”. Cahiers du Cinema: The 1960s. Jim Hillier. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Chion, Michel. The Films of Jacques Tati. New York: Guernica, 1997.
Leutrat, Jean-Louis. “The Power of Language”. The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard. Michael Temple & James S. Williams. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000.

Makeieff, Macha. Playtime. Notes on Lecture, 4/10/2007.

Ramierz, Francis and Christian Rolot. Mon Oncle: Jacques Tati. Collection Synopsis, no. 16. Paris: Nathan, 1993.

Mon Oncle. Jacques Tati. DVD. Criterion, 2001.

Stam, Robert. French New Wave II. Notes on Lecture, 2/8/2007.

Thiher, Allen. “Postmodern Dilemmas: Godard's Alphaville and Two or Three Things That I Know about Her”. Boundary 2, Vol. 4, No. 3. (Spring, 1976), pp. 947-964.

Two or Three Things I Know About Her. Jean-Luc Godard. VHS. New Yorker Films, 1988.

Paris In Pictures: New Wave Visions of the Modern City pt. 5

Godard plays with the idea of consumption and mass culture throughout Two or Three Things. He offers many symbols of culture – magazine covers, famous quotes, novels – but sets them up so that, as signifiers, they offer little meaning. In one scene, Juliette and fellow prostitute Miriam don duffel bags bearing TWA and PAN-AM logos and are forced to parade around naked. In another, two men sit in a café compiling sentences out of novels in the hope of composing the ultimate book. Both these scenes exhibit the appropriation of cultural images or objects, but recontextualize them so that all meaning is obscured.

Godard keeps a philosophical dialogue going throughout the film via a non-diegetic voiceover. Considering the narrator’s penchant for the first person, and his lengthy transcendental musings, it’s almost appropriate to assume that it is a surrogate for Godard himself. One scene is particularly telling of this idea: as the camera focuses in on a cup of coffee, the narrator laments his inability to understand objects, and his verbose speech peters out into a verifiable spew of words. It is as if Godard himself is lamenting the way language has been corrupted by culture, rendered ineffective. “To say that the limits of language, of my language, are those of the world, of my world, and that in speaking, I limit the world, I end it” he cries.



If Two or Three Things presents the idea that consumerism has limited man’s ability to communicate, than it also suggests that the modern environment limits man’s ability to connect. As previously stated, construction is depicted in the film as imposing, a dominating force. But already established edifices are given equally biting critiques. “A landscape is like a face”. Towards the end of the film, Godard pans around Juliette’s building complex as she says this phrase. We see that the area is completely enclosed by buildings, each one composed of tiny little boxes, presumably individual apartments. The space is called le grand ensemble, a new form of urban organization implying a certain sense of togetherness, and yet we can only perceive the area in fragments, as each individual who lives there must do as well.

To Be Continued...

Paris In Pictures: New Wave Visions of the Modern City pt. 4

Two or Three Things Godard Knows About Language

“I examine the city, its inhabitants, and the bonds between them as closely as a biologist examines the relations between individuals and race in evolution. Only thus can I tackle problems of social pathology and formulate hope for a genuine new city” - Narrator

The opening credits of Two or Three Things I Know About Her feature an inter-title that informs the viewer that the word Her refers to the Paris region, while it also refers to the main protagonist and the actress playing her. This concept – the suggestion of dual intendment behind a word – is crucial to the film. Like in Mon Oncle, Two or Three Things offers a semblance of a narrative: the film follows a day in the life of a suburban housewife who practices prostitution part-time in order to afford luxuries that society deems necessary. Through herstruggles to stay on top in life, the film explores mankind’s relationship to language, semiotics and meaning.



Two or Three Things opens with the image of a large highway construction site. The interminable racket of modern development heard over the credits is hushed as a voice over begins, outlining history and establishing philosophical viewpoints. Both of these elements remain constant throughout the film. Godard offers documentary style visuals of the physical growth of Paris; giant cranes and dump trucks, unfinished highways over dilapidated homes. The construction seems daunting, as modern buildings and work sites seem to tower into the sky, envelope older cityscapes. The fact that these are actual shots of Paris reinforces the cinematic idea of injecting symbolism onto reality, an idea that plays a crucial role in the film. How do we accept cinematic representations as being ‘real’ when the basic properties of film automatically convert all images into symbols? Godard plays with this idea by showing these construction sites, presenting them as they exist, but over-scoring their presence, having them appear monstrous and dwarfing. Thus the audience understands both what is ‘real’, and the critique of progress the images present.



A similar example of this idea can be found at the beginning of the film when the main protagonist, Juliette, is introduced. The voice over first introduces her as the actress Marina Vlady. Then the scene repeats, reintroducing her under her characters name. This demonstrates how the cinematic medium converts what is real into a symbol; Vlady is at once her real self, and her fictional cinematic counterpart. As Allen Thiher points out, this allows Juliette, as a cinematic character, to have multiple voices: “On one level she speaks as a fictional housewife-prostitute in a non-reflexive manner. On a second level she examines her language and uses self-reflexive language. This level leads to a third where she tests her language against her environment, which often shows how absurdly incongruous her language is with regard to the images that present her situation” (958).

From here, Godard is able to disregard conventional cinematic standards for conversation and allow the character to slip out of a scene and impose additional commentary. This, coupled with the film’s documentary style approach, grants access into the thoughts of both major and minor characters, almost in a novel-like fashion, highlighting the shortcomings of language and the cinematic medium.



For example, in the scene in the shop where Juliette purchases a new dress, the camera picks up the banal chatter of several young girls. In one shot, the camera stops and focuses on a girl, who says “I have a date with Jean-Claude at 8. We go to a restaurant, sometimes a film.” This part of the scene appears like a documentary, the camera focusing on the girl as if it were asking her a question.

However, when Juliette speaks into the camera seconds later, it becomes clear that Godard is not interested in the banality of the girls conversation, but rather their inability to fully communicate due to the consumer-based, degrading environment surrounding them. “I know how to talk. Let’s talk together,” Juliette begins. “Together is a word I like. Together means thousands of people, perhaps a whole city. No one knows what the city of the future will be like. Part of the wealth of meaning it had will undoubtedly be lost. The creative and formative roles of the city will be taken over by other forms of communication. Maybe… television and radio…Vocabulary and syntax, consciously and deliberately.” This reflexive speech seems to draw on the Parisian girls inability to discuss anything real. And yet, the speech itself seems equally disgenuine, clearly scripted. The following shot of a trashy paperback shows Godard is commenting on the way language seems to have piggybacked off of a massified culture. Language is no longer an effective mode of expression, because it has been commoditized, marketed, and consumed.

To be continued..

Check out Paris in Pictures parts 1,2, and 3!

Paris In Pictures: New Wave Visions of the Modern City pt.1

The image seems clear. A giant crane towers over fractured earth; its red steel beams crosscutting sections of a bright blue sky. Thunderous shrieks of metal rubbing against rust permeate the air as the machine slowly turns, moving large pieces of pipe to their desired destination. A group of men in plastic orange suits work feverishly below, setting fire to steel and debating the specifics of their creation. Dump trucks rush past, carrying tons of dirt and rock, leaving trails of dust in their place. Fragments of ground spew forth; everywhere the land is shifted, reshaped, recycled.

The image seems clear, but it is contradictory. It is at once a sign of progress, and of gentrification. Construction and deconstruction. Destruction. We tear down the past to make room for the future. Destroy in the name of creation. The City is no stranger to the effects of modernized men; who, of the belief that ‘newer’ is synonymous with ‘better’, rebuild to reconstitute their surroundings and align them with contemporary modes of thought.

But what effects does this modernization have on the people? Where does the simple man fit into this neoteric equation? And who is to say that progress necessitates physical growth?



The French New Wave directors were not quick to dismiss old ideas, nor were they content to celebrate innovation. As post-war Paris experienced its largest development since 1914; as the suburbs began to expand considerably with the construction of large social estates known as cites; as a comprehensive express subway system, the RER, was built to complement the Métro and a network of freeways began circling around the city, New Wave directors explored city life with a watchful eye, observant of the profound effects innovation had on its inhabitants.

And perhaps no two directors were more cognizant of this transmuting social climate than Jacques Tati and Jean-Luc Godard. Tati, with his long overcoat and towery frame, seemed ill suited for modern life, uncomfortable in his surroundings as he was within his own skin. More a predecessor than a part of the New Wave, his uncompromising vision and inability to meld into modernity made him an influential figure within the movement, and it is difficult to separate his image from that of la Nouvelle Vague. Likewise, Godard, the figurehead and an inscrutable insurgent, proposed radical explorations of humanity and social order. His films question the commonality of the human experience, and prompt viewers to re-evaluate the significance, practice, and capacity of culture.



For both directors, the devastating effects of modern times proved fertile ground for thematic exploration across multiple films. However, Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958) and Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) are their respective seminal works on the subject. While they were made almost ten years apart from each other, both films present representations of the modernization and physical growth of Paris. Both filmmakers use intertexts to comment upon this rapid expansion: Godard through semiotics and the written word, Tati through the modes of silent comedy.

However, beneath these intertexts lies each director's comprehensive knowledge and technical abilities to make full use of the malleability of the film image. It becomes necessary, then, to explore these two films specifically as representations of a ‘modern’ Paris and how these representations relate to the flexibility and sculpture-like qualities of the cinematic image.

Revisit: Tout Va Bien

A New Yorker Films release 1972

Written & Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Pierre Gorin

Examines the structure of movies, relationships and revolutions through the life of a couple (Jane Fonda, Yves Montand) in Paris.



One of the biggest problems I have with Godard is that his politics are often misinterpreted as sincere, concrete beliefs. It's easy to romaticize the iconoclast ideals of May '68, and unfortunately Godard's films are too often regarded as soapboxes for the student revolution. While he may be aligned with the left simply through his intellectual status, Godard himself would be the first to admit that he knows nothing of politics. Politics of the cinema, however, is Godard's fortee, and he uses his distinct ability to manipulate image and sound to playfully comment on all sorts of political manifesto.

No film may make this more clear than Tout Va Bien, in which Godard examines the rapidly changing politics of post-68 France. The film comically depicts both the bourgeoisie and working class, using multilayered sound, response style monologues, slow pans and other traditional Godardian tactics to render all politics into senseless jargon. The film is swift despite its heavy thematic undertones, and effective in portraying languages inability to communicate the complicated needs and desires of political advocates both right and left. Remember that scene in The Life Aquatic where the Belafonte is dissected through a side shot of all the cabins? Wes Anderson got that from this film.



Ten years later, this is what the French were up to:

Revisit: Masculine Feminine

A Franco-Swedish Production 1966
Written & Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and dishillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend Madeline (Chantal Goya) builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola') and their social and emotional politics.

A great introduction to the Brechtian workings of Godard, Masculine Feminine contains many of the formal and thematic motifs concurrent throughout Godard's career. The film is divided into '15 precise facts' or acts - a device stemming from Brect's idea of the "separation of the elements/a theater of interruptions" - that act like a staged newspaper. Given the date of December 1965, the film has a specific timliness to it, with Godard acting as a sort of sociologist, tapping into the attitudes of young French men and women; Paul, the passionate male lead, takes a job as a surveyor, but is rather Godard and his audience who are surveying him. Interruptions can be found throughout the film; each couple presented are interrupted by a third party, and there is a distinct lack of privacy that reflects the Parisian way of life. Themes of high and low culture, forms of prostitution, and indiffrence towards violence are prevelant as well.



Like many of Godard's films, Masculine Feminine is anti-realist (the film contains virtually no eyeline matches between characters, jump cuts that tinker with time and space, text intertitles that separate chapters), yet it remains rooted in the rhythm of everyday life. It's a reminder that reflexivity and realism are not mutually exclusive - an autuerist stamp of Godard. The use of sound is of note here, as each noise presented is equal; the sound of a car horn rivals that of the dialogue.

Godard is a figure who often questions the way we view films; with no distinct linear plotline or Hollywood style arch, Masculine Feminine is the kind of film that's meant to be discussed. A great example of Godard's style for those who know little about the director.