Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma

by Jean-Luc Godard

In 1978, just before returning to the international stage for the second phase of his career, the world’s most renowned art-film director then and now, Jean-Luc Godard, improvised a series of fourteen one-hour talks at Concordia University in Montreal as part of a projected video history of cinema. These talks, published in French in 1980 and long out of print, have never before been translated into English. For this edition, the faulty and incomplete French transcription has been entirely revised and corrected, working from the sole videotape copies of the lectures, housed in the Concordia University archives.

For this project, Godard screened for a dozen or so students his own famous films of the 1960s—watching them himself for the first time since their production—alongside single reels of some of the films which most influenced his work (by Eisenstein, Dreyer, Rossellini, the American directors of the 1950s and many others). Working at the dawn of the video age, a technology which was to be essential to his completion of the project many years later, as the visual essay Histoire(s) du cinéma, Godard used pieces of 35mm film, projected in an auditorium, to approximate the historical montage he was groping towards. He then held forth, in an experience he describes as a form of ‘public self-psychoanalysis’, on his personal and professional relationships (with François Truffaut, Anna Karina, Raoul Coutard, film producers and audiences), working methods, aesthetic preferences, political beliefs and, on the cusp of 50, his philosophy of life.

The result is the most extensive and revealing account ever of his work and critical opinions. Never has Godard been as loquacious, lucid and disarmingly frank as he is here. This volume is certain to become one of the great classics of film literature, by perhaps the wittiest and most idiosyncratic genius cinema has known.

Readers familiar with the Histoire(s) du cinéma video project, famous for its enigmatic juxtapositions of fragments of texts and images, will find some of the same works discussed here, providing an invaluable key to the meaning of Godard’s later collages.

Two editions of the book will be printed: a sewn-binding, cloth-covered library edition and a sewn-binding paperback with a thick (15 pt.) card cover that will not curl. Only the best-quality printing and binding materials and techniques are being used to create a handsome and durable volume in either edition. This will be one of the most attractive and well-made books you own. The book is 558 pages, with 150,000 words from Godard’s talks, 30,000 words of commentary and 80 full-page illustrations, twenty-four of which are in Godard’s hand and the rest film stills he manipulated with a photocopier for the original edition of the book.

As a bonus, with every on-line purchase of the book a volume in caboose's new series Kino Agora will be given away free of charge. A new title in the series will be introduced every few months throughout 2012 and 2013 and shipped with the Godard. Kino-Agora titles are also available as e-books from Amazon and Apple.

Genres: Film, History, Art, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Jean-Luc Godard is a French and Swiss filmmaker and one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave".

Godard was born to Franco-Swiss parents in Paris. He attended school in Nyon, Switzerland, and at the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sorbonne in Paris. During his time at the Sorbonne, he became involved with the young group of filmmakers and film theorists that gave birth to the New Wave.

Many of Godard's films challenged the conventions of Hollywood cinema, and he was often considered the most extreme New Wave filmmaker. His films often expressed his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, Godards' films often cited existential and Marxist philosophy.

Reviews

[silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

soy insoportable por haberme leído esto pero lo soy aún más porque me haya gustado tanto? sí

[Paulo Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television" is such a long title that may distract people from the use of a simple article: "a", which is not "the". And actually this is the whole point. This is an introduction to "A TRUE HISTORY" not to "The True History" - if it were so that would be actually a lie.

So what is this all about? It is a materialization of talks given in Quebec, Montreal, between April and October 1978, between Jean-Luc Godard and Serge Losique, for an audience of 15 to 30 people per session (most of them were the same).
Jean-Luc Godard is one of the fathers of the Nouvell Vague, the new wave of French Cinema that started in the 60s. Godard broke through with his first feature "Breathless" /" À bout de souffle"(1960), the only film that had any commercial success. From then on he was in and used his credibility to make very cheap and amazing films that deconstructed Cinema gradually and promoted new ways of questioning and communicating with audiences. For this Godard was called a Genius, and these talks, transcriptions, give you access to his way of thinking, in many ways at least, and how he was so good at selling himself, even when he didn't know what to say.
These talks had a purpose very dear do JLGodard, he aimed to give an insight into what was lost, at the time in already 83 years of Cinema, and how people were undermining the power of Images.

Now, for a reader to communicate with these transcriptions I advise the following. First and foremost, you need to know very well the work of JLG, specially in the 60s, know all of his films, and if you think that there aren't many, well, look again, this man made more than 3 features per year sometimes, in the first 4-5 years he had already 10 feature films. These films show, like it is introduced in the talks, Godard finding himself and aiming for a notion of power through somewhat conventional diegetic devices and then to gradually deconstruct them and find new ways of telling a story and expose notions of partial truth and personal transformation.
Then you should know the other films that were shown at these sessions, Godard and Losique gradually found a method to talk about the progress of Cinema using excerpts of other films on the morning (20m from one then cut to other one) and in the afternoon a film of Godard, the logic was to give insight to what Godard was reacting to and what do the films have in common. Therefore, you should know your Cinema History well.

This was a great invitation for me to revise some of his films, some which I haven't had the chance to see in 10-12 years, and also others, specially Silent films which I missed a lot in my life.

From these talks you can gather that Godard wanted to talk about things that he himself probably hadn't faced in a long time, being a filmmaker myself I can understand how violent it can be to look at things that you had done before, but also it can be quite insightful.
You can understand that he created a lot in the 60s because he wanted to survive, he wanted to have money to have a normal life, therefore he had to make a lot of cheap films to survive and even guarantee some future safety - I found this to be very honest, but at the same as a defense mechanism against certain impulsive decisions that he nevertheless had to make.
He gives you insight into his moto's, like, obligation is rhythm and style, and that you should do what you can and not what you want.
These little gems are actually things that I've lived myself and they touched me, it is actually quite beautiful to realize that other people have thoughts like you do (in things that you love, of course)

One of the major thesis of Godard is that we lost something in the Silent era, because where nowadays there is one shot in the old days there were three, because we couldn't hear people talking, so the same shot gets divided into two sections with a title card in the middle. I found this to be very true, I still remember when I watched "The Story of Floating Weeds" by Ozu and later watched "Floating Weeds" that he himself redid 20 years later, both films are amazing, but the first one is indeed much more powerful. The fact is precisely in this division, I noticed that when one interrupts the image, specially when it is made with a certain abrupt violence, it re-spawns your attention, when you get back to it the same image is often much fresher. A device that is used nowadays but in a different fashion.
We lost this and the silence as well, there is no space for thought or introspection. I mean, I remember Tarkovsky (which Godard never speaks about) fought for it in all of his films, but even a Tarkovsky film will always be much louder than Earth by Dovzhenko, a film that Andrey Tarkovsky loved very much and Godard spoke about but had to show Arsenal instead because Losique couldn't find it at the time.
This brings about the other great invention in Cinema, that accordingly to Godard it is mistakenly credited to DW Griffith, the Close-Up, which in reality came from a need to have a certain editing technique.
The Close-up was distorted and gave away the freedom of Cinema for the Stardom of the spotlight, the face on the screen was a symbol of power. People could recognize you and hear you. Everybody wants to be loved, if you can have a stage for that expression there will be power.
I agree with Godard in this, and he uses his past very well here. He talks about working with Belmondo on his first film and others, being the most popular "Pierrot Le Fou" (1965) - a fantastic film, I might add - and 12-13 years later he was having problems working with Belmondo again, because he was now a star and stars have power of decision, they have a say in what is being done, and this is utterly disgusting, Belmondo even said to him "please make a straightforward film". Nowadays it is even worse.
And the book ends with a collection of photo montages by Godard that tell the story of Television, and like stated in the talks, Television sucked power from Cinema, but can't live without it, still to this day it can't, but used its powers to extravagate its need to control people, by weakening images and create stars.
It's true, Television has the power to gather more spectators, and the close-ups and flux of empty images enter your life, nowadays, clearly through the Internet and Smartphones and things a like. This is another sip of gold that you take from these talks, JLG was right about this also, Televison bombs you with images so you undermine their power.
Words have a lot of power, you can tell, if something was approved or not doesn't come with an image it comes in words. But images, real images, have immense power, they show what words cannot suffice - Who can put into words a painting by Francis Bacon, I mean, I have those books in my home but because I want to see the paintings and I never have read and never will read about them, it is just silly.
If you pay attention nowadays, images abound, images, videos, there you have it, but they are empty, they are shallow. These images are very crude representations of real images that have real emotions and together might conjure a sentiment. This isn't something that you find. In fact, nowadays, you find people that are so attached to these shallow affairs and they will defend them with stronger emotions - which isn't very hard, since the images themselves don't have much.

Then Godard speaks about a true notion of History, the true History of Cinema comes from the trace of real images that cannot be forgotten.

This is what I gathered that he did later, 11 years later he started to put out "Histoire(s) Du Cinema", a series of films (50m to 30m), 10 of them I believe, about the history of Cinema and the relationship between images.
Clearly the History will always be subjective, but in this case, there is real evidence. Real Images juxtaposed together, there isn't much to be faked here. You might be distracted by their organization, a flaw that I believe JLG was well aware of, but nevertheless it is something real.

Even the other day I was reading this commentary by Stephen King, the cartoons of Scooby-Doo have a lot of humanity in them, because all the monsters are people.
In these talks Godard gives you that hint also, all the monsters of Cinema are Human beings, don't get distracted by political ideologies, for example, in Dracula by Tod Browning, is Dracula the real Monster? Or he is the entity that expresses what monsters do? Around him are bankers, lawyers, contractors - these are the real monsters that suck your blood, right?
In his film that afternoon, "Week-end", whose monsters do you think he was talking about?

I'm really curious to watch those episodes of Histoire(s) du Cinema now, I don't believe I will want to read the books, I gather what JLG had to say, but from him I prefer the images and the sounds.

NOTE:
At the end, it is true the last two talks lose their momentum, and unfortunately the last two talks that were supposed to have taken place in December 78 and another in 79 never happened, apparently, Losique had checks that were bouncing and Godard stopped attending. He later tried to start his work on Historie(s) du Cinema but failed, only to successfully start 10 years later in the late 80s.

I have to say that I admire Jean-Luc Godard, he wanted to show people their prison through his love for Cinema. He wasn't a great thinker, against what many people believe - most of them fanatics that can't make films and hide behind the abstract thoughts of Godard to create something in their lives - but he had a very personal fire and was a very intelligent man. He developed cinematic devices that are amazing and he wanted to show people how to observe themselves, because if they were able to realize that, that they were seeing films as they themselves were and not as the films were, they would not be fooled so easily like they were then and clearly as they are now.
Maybe Godard became a victim of his own schemes, you can also notice this in his talks, he had a mind that was always on the run and very defensive, even in moments like this where he was more kind and open about many things. He knew that being unique could be seen as a major flaw. Paradoxically he used his uniqueness to his survival and produce transformation but never being able to cope with his solitude - this is something that I believe that he tried to fight in the early 2000s, you can even see it in his work.
In these talks he says to you that he wanted to work with Robert De Niro, he was tired of being unique - and in this sentence, unfortunately you find the real history of Cinema, that we can't stand being unique, we all just want a blanket that unifies our pasts and gives all of us what we want from it, warm love - This is in itself a contradiction

PS: Beautiful edition by Caboose and great translation and notes by Timothy Barnard - I advise you to buy the book directly from Caboose, I did.

[Samuel Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

everything is framed.

[Slow Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect companion for watching through his oeuvre. Great images, amazing introductory essay, and some very cool reflections on his major narrative films—sometimes the interviews are a bit freewheeling but then he’ll strike out with a phrase or sentence that will completely change how you think of a director or movie or era of Hollywood cinema or whatever else…glad to have access to this book

[Diletta Anselmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5