samedi 28 novembre 2009

# Godardian landscapes

I recently watched two movies from Jean-Luc Godard that I did not know before, and I was really impressed by two sets which compose interesting landscapes which shove cinema's etiquette.
First one is from Pierrot le Fou (1965) and dramatizes a stand alone piece of highway in the middle of a field and from which a car fell without any indication for the spectator how it did go up on it...
Second one is from Tout va bien (All's well) (1972), in which Godard questions the mutation of 1968's social movement with the take of a factory by its workers. The administrative department of the factory is shown as a section on which the spectator can read a caption: One is right to sequester bosses. Unlimited Strike. Since then, some directors did follow this apparatus, I am thinking in particular of Chan-Wook Park in Old Boy, but I am pretty sure that Godard is the first one to establish it (if anybody has more information about that feel free to comment on it).
In addition of those two movies, I could not resist to also insert Godard's shoot of the Villa Malaparte in Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963), which is more classic but which, in its remoteness (on a cliff with the see around), succeeds to create for the narration, a setting extracted from reality.


2 commentaires:

  1. Giuliana Bruno's Atlas of emotion has some very interesting analysis on the architecture and cartography in Godard's films, especially on Contempt.

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