Early Godard (Breathless through Contempt)

I read in Richard Roud's book on Godard that perhaps a theme which could summarize or encapsulate so many of Godard's interests is the theme of prostitution.  Let's start there, since it would seem, at least in early Godard, that what might not be connected in subject matter or genre could in some ways at least share this theme.  To Godard, "a prostitute [is] anyone who does something he doesn't want to."  We can then safely say that the protagonists of all six of the movies [Breathless, The Little Soldier, A Woman is a Woman, Vivre Sa Vie, Les Carabiniers, and Contempt] either literally or metaphorically confront or are confronted with the question of prostitution.  Though each movie differs in its affect, tone, and story, all of the movies show what I assume becomes Godard's main political message throughout his career: Capitalism, consumerism, or just plain money, is an operating system which ask us to prostitute ourselves in order for the machine to keep turning.

However, in these first six feature films, Godard's political didacticism is set at a pretty low temperature, almost as if the political considerations of his story were a second-thought to the primary, driving force of these films: namely, their formal innovations and techniques.  In this way, Godard's first six films perhaps reflect more an attempt to make films politically, which is to say, that the way in which these films were produced was often as important as the story the films contained.  Not only was Godard using handheld cameras, faster film (which could shoot in low light conditions), new sound-recording technology, and bare locations... but he was also experimenting with the formal elements of editing.

Right off the bat, it is apparent that Godard is up to something entirely new in cinema's history with the introduction of the jump cut which he employs throughout Breathless.  Where many of the American films that Godard was influenced by were once focused on "suturing" a cut (making it invisible or as seamless as possible), Godard comes along to introduce the cut as something which is entirely noticeable, which keeps the viewer on a continual loop of never fully being able to forget he's watching a movie even as he can't stop watching.  Other factors in the movie contribute to this effect as well: the litany of pop culture references, the seeming amorality of the main character (and the movie), the jazzy score which comes in and out, the skeleton plot (or obfuscation of plot), the philosophical discussions about happiness, men, women, and money, and the fact that many scenes take place around movie theaters.

Many of these attributes could be found in all of the first six of Godard's movies.  Therefore, though these movies jump genres and sometimes skirt around political issues and themes, in their formal and tonal fabric is the making of a political cinema.  It is a cinema which is attempting to both a) remind the viewer they are watching a movie, and therefore think about the relationship between the movie and "the real world," and b) challenge the homogenized forms of cinema to show that, in fact, new forms are possible.  Really, these are one and the same-- to Godard, cinema and life seem to be inseparable.  They both reflect on and change the other.

Let's look at A Woman is a Woman, probably the second least political (next to Breathless) of these six films.  The film is Godard's first direct foray into the differences between men and women (with what seems to be an equal distribution of gender exploration and misogyny) but its affect is light and comical, and it resembles a musical comedy from the 50s in its color schemes and references.  However, the music in the film inexplicably cuts out at what seems like random times, leaving the only sound to be Anna Karina's clicking heels on the pavement and her singing with no backing track.  The effect is that the illusion of the film is broken -- instead of making the film disappear before your eyes, these techniques point out that what you are watching was constructed and built by somebody, that it is a movie.  That it is a product.  Somehow, though, we still become enveloped in the story.  Godard wants his cake and eats it too.

Godard is a dialectical thinker, and this is evident in his films, in his interviews, and in his writings.  He considered himself an "essay-writer" and his films filmed essays.  So, it is safe to say that Godard constructs an argument with each of his films and then sets out to prove his thesis.  (A question one could posit would be, "How is this different than Hollywood films of the era?"  And I would say, it's in the execution of course.  But this argument needs more thought and so it will have to be continued at a later date...)  It always seems like the films are at struggle with themselves, just like the characters, and probably just like Godard.  Both characters and movie seem to constantly be asking questions and answering them with other questions, never settling, never coming to a finite conclusion.

Even in a film like Vivre Sa Vie (My life to live), which ends on a dour note where the prostitute is killed in a shootout over a failed transaction (she is half of the transaction), we cannot be completely sure if Godard is saying that she chose her fate, or whether she could not escape it.  Most likely, he is saying both.  One could easily say that clearly the movie ends the way it does to show that it was in fact not "her life to live," that she was a product that was sold to hungry customers and in the end was treated as inhumanely as a non-human product could be.  However, in the middle of the film, the main protagonist says that, "I think we're always responsible for our actions.  We're free."  She goes on to say that if she's unhappy, she's responsible.  This is certainly one way of looking at the world, and it is unclear whether Godard includes this speech because he wants to paint a portrait of a very naive person, or if he includes it because he actually half-believes it.  One of the reasons Vivre Sa Vie stands out in this group of films is that it is perhaps the closest to a "traditional" narrative and affect, the sympathetic portrait of a woman trying to climb her way out of prostitution.  Again, though, Godard makes it his own: a scene where she dances around a billiards table makes us very aware of the cinematic and musical techniques being employed even as it keeps us engaged with the furthering of the story.  The opening scene begins on a long conversation that tracks laterally between the backs of two peoples' heads.  One of the characters even refers to Le Petit Soldat.  I would say that Vivre Sa Vie is a more subversive film than the others though, since its cinematic techniques are more familiar, the narrative more straight-forward, and the images prettier than something like Les Carabiniers.

Les Carabiniers, by far the most satirical and absurdist of the group of films, was probably the least financially successful.  It is a war film, in which the scenes of war which are depicted are mundane, ramshackle, and low-production cost.  Like Le Petit Soldat, Godard was figuring out new ways to tell genre stories with smaller and smaller budgets.  Le Petit Soldat is a film about spies in the French-Algerian war where most of the action takes place in bland rooms with white walls and white blinds and almost no production design.  The spaces act as both a reveal that the movie is a movie, and also reflect a more frightening reality than perhaps larger budget films: that the people who are spying and killing others operate out of rooms with nothing in them.  That torture is routine and takes place in a hotel bathtub with handcuffs fastened to the faucet.  However, while Le Petit Soldat uses these qualities to enhance its possibilities of depicting the real world, Les Carabiniers uses these tactics for opposite effect, to show the absurdity of war, the humorous physical dislocation of soldiers and the ridiculous lies of a King to his soldiers, his country.  In both of these ways, Les Carabiniers is a bit Orwellian, but only in subject matter, not affect.  Godard's tone is one of irreverence, nonchalance, anything-goes, amoral rambunctiousness.  Again, sound drops out of the film throughout, eradicating any notions that the film is an entity in itself, that it exists on its own.  Somebody made this ridiculous thing, just like somebody makes ridiculous wars.

Contempt seems to be an evolution of Godard's style, if only for the fact that it is only his second color film, and his use of color and music seem more expressionistic and less jarring.  One is seduced into that film in the way that the screenwriter is hired to write for a callous, vapid American producer.  The film is beautiful to look at and the music is gorgeous; the film even seems to be more linear, more focused on the narrative, even as Godard indulges many digressions where characters just walk, or talk philosophy, or have long, protracted arguments in their flat.  This is also one of the films I noticed was using more locked down shots (along with Vivre Sa Vie) and explores and employs Godard's lateral tracking shot on a grander scale than does Vivre Sa Vie.  Contempt, like Les Carabiniers, also feels like a fable, particularly a remake of the greek myth of Orpheus and perhaps even some of the Odyssey, which is the movie the screenwriter has been hired to write.  This shows that Godard is beginning to branch out from his dime-store gangster novel adaptations to something more timeless, and yet still brings himself to it and makes it his own.

Next up: Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, and A Married Woman.