Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (128 page)

20
. Schiffman, videotaped interview by Bernard Cohn.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Godard, interview by Collet.

23
. Ibid.

24
.
L’Express
, July 27, 1961.

25
. Godard, interview by Collet.

26
. Bernanos distinguished the French Revolution from the Russian Revolution, which he characterized as the revolt of urban and cosmopolitan Jews who “exploited” the Christian “muzhiks” rooted in the land and in authentic Russian culture (George Bernanos,
La France contre les robots
[Paris: R. Laffont, 1947], pp. 84–85).

27
. Ibid., p. 139.

28
. This role was played by Christa Lang, a German actress living in Paris, who would soon meet and later marry the American film director Samuel Fuller.

29
. The heroine of
Le Nouveau Monde
keeps a dagger in the same place.

30
. Paul Eluard,
Capitale de la douleur
, edited with an introduction and notes by Vera J. Daniel (Oxford: Blackwell French Texts, 1985), pp. 42, 114, 115.

31
.
Paris-Presse
, May 12, 1965.

32
. Ibid.

33
.
Le Monde
, December 29, 1965.

34
.
Cinématographe
, December 1980.

35
.
New York Review of Books
, October 28, 1965.

36
.
The New Yorker
, October 9, 1965.

37
.
Village Voice
, September 16, 1965.

Chapter Twelve:
Pierrot le fou

1
.
France-Soir
, February 25, 1964.

2
. Philippe Durant,
Belmondo
(Lausanne: Ed. Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1987), p. 110.

3
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1965;
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 265.

4
. Rémo Forlani,
Toujours vif et joyeux
(Paris: Denoël, 2003) p. 472.

5
. Godard,
Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma
, p. 146.

6
. www.arkepix.com/kinok/Raoul%20coutard/coutard_interview1.html, text of an interview from May 1, 1999.

7
.
Lui
, July 1965.

8
. “Le Tourbillon de la vie” (The Whirlwind of Life).

9
. Serge Rezvani,
Les Années–lumiére (Le Testament amoureux)
(Arles: Actes Sud, 1997), p. 1166.

10
. Alain Bergala,
Nul mieux que Godard
, pp. 5–6. Bergala would later be a critic and editor at
Cahiers
.

11
. Claude Lanzmann, interview by author, February 26, 2003.

12
.
Le Nouvel Observateur
, July 21, 1965.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Luc Moullet, interview by author, November 17, 2001.

15
. Alain Jouffroy, interview by author, June 27, 2002.

16
. Jean-Paul Belmondo, interview with Rex Reed,
New York Herald Tribune
, October 17, 1965.

17
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
(Paris: Grasset, 1987), p. 119.

18
. Schiffman, taped interview by Bernard Cohn, September 27, 1999.

19
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1965.

20
.
Le Monde
, April 22, 1966.

21
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1965;
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 265.

22
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1965;
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 263.

23
. The film was never made.

24
. The 1962 Ford Galaxie that Godard sank in the sea was in fact his own; and he had acquired it through the good offices and better contrivances of his friend Roland Tolmatchoff: “The’ 62 Galaxie—because I had a ‘61—which I just sold, by the way—the big white American car—which I had gone to New York to buy—then I went to his home on the rue Niccolo. French customs knocks on the door—‘That car, is it yours?’ He says,‘No, it’s his.’ By chance, I had on me the papers for import into Switzerland, and the temporary registration—they said, ‘Make sure you bring it back to Switzerland.’ That’s the car that he dunked in the water.” Tolmatchoff, interview by author, March 20, 2002.

25
.
New York Times
, March 18, 1965.

26
. She is wearing a T-shirt that reads “Mic Mac,” and as they dance to music coming from a portable record player, Marianne murmurs along: “Oh, quel micmac!” (Oh, what a mess!) The moment, of apassing insignificance, is strikingly significant: it is a pentimento, alluding to a third song that is not in the film but is inseparable from it. The song, “Mic et Mac,” with lyrics by Rémo Forlani and music by Antoine Duhamel (who wrote the film’s score), told the story of two men, Mic and Mac, who are in lovewith the same woman, and of the woman, who cannot choose (“Mic wants to kill Mac, Mac wants to kill Mic, oh, quel micmac!”). Forlani was of course alluding to the triangle of Godard, Karina, and Maurice Ronet, but Godard, finding the allusion to his private life too direct, suppressed the song from the film, and yet leaves in the film just enough of it for those in the know to know that Godard too was in the know.

27
.
Pariscope
, October 13, 1965, p. 26. To a journalist from the
New Yorker
, when he was presenting
Alphaville
at the New York Film Festival in September, Godard reported Truffaut’s response: “He said it’s a startling film, and he said, ‘I hope everybody doesn’t start to make movies like this, because then I’ll have to give up making movies.’”
The New Yorker
, October 9, 1965, p. 45.

28
.
Pariscope
, October 13, 1965.

29
. Godard’s press conference from Venice, CS clipping.

30
. Louis Marcorelles,
Les Lettres françaises
, September 2, 1965.

31
. Yvonne Baby,
Le Monde
, August 31, 1965.

32
. Michel Cournot,
Le Nouvel Observateur
, September 1, 1965.

33
.
Les Lettres françaises
, September 9, 1965.

34
.
Le Nouvel Observateur
, November 3, 1965.

35
.
L’Humanité
, November 6, 1965.

36
. Bernard-Henri Lévy, interview with author, May 24, 2004.

37
. http://www2.bifi.fr/cineregards/article.asp?sp_ref=233&ref_sp_type=2&revue_ref=26 March 27, 2003.

38
. http://www.fluctuat.net/cinema/interview/akerman2.htm. In 1968, she made her first film, a short film,
Saute ma ville
(Blow Up My City), which was precisely that, a version of the ending of
Pierrot le fou
in which a young woman does to herself in her kitchen in Brussels the same thing that Ferdinand did to himself on the promontory of the islandof Porquerolles.

39
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 189.

40
. Ibid., p. 28.

41
. Rezvani,
Les Années-lumière (Le Testament amoureux)
, p. 1210.

42
.
Arts
, March 30, 1966.

Chapter Thirteen:
Masculine Feminine

1
.
L’Avant-Scène Cinéma
, May 1965;
G par G
, vol. 1, pp. 257–58.

2
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1965;
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 263.

3
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 19.

4
. Vianey, interview by author, June 7, 2000.

5
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 56.

6
. Jacques Gerber,
Anatole Dauman: Pictures of a Producer
, Paul Willemen, trans. (London: BFI, 1992), p. 104. The word “fuck” is rendered “f…”

7
. Dauman, p. 96.

8
. Jacques Gerber,
Anatole Dauman: Pictures of a Producer
, p. 97.

9
. Though Truffaut did intend to make more films about Antoine Doinel, it was only Godard’s plans for his own film that prompted Truffaut, in the summer of 1965, to start work on a new script for the character. (Truffaut,
Correspondence
, p. 172.)

10
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 69.

11
.
Les Lettres françaises
, April 21, 1966.

12
.
Masculine Feminine
(New York: Grove Press, 1969), p. 220.

13
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 27.

14
.
Masculine Feminine
(Grove Press), p. 235;
24 Heures
, December 29, 1965.

15
. Duport had a small role in Truffaut’s
The Soft Skin
.

16
. Jean-Luc Godard, interview by Pierre Daix,
Les Lettres françaises
, April 21, 1966.

17
. Ibid.

18
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, pp. 73–74.

19
. A French imitation of
The New Yorker
, down to the typeface and the cartoons.

20
.
Masculine Feminine
, p. 235.

21
. Christian Jelen, “Les Commandés,”
Les Temps Modernes
, September–October 1965.

22
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 106.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Ibid.

25
. The novel was awarded the Prix Renaudot, a major French literary prize, on November 22, 1965, the first day of the shoot of the film.

26
. The three lines of on-screen typography (the children / of Marx / Coca-Cola) could make the possessive
de
apply together or separately to the two objects: “the children of Marx / of Coca-Cola”; here too is another example of the understanding of the film and its substance being determined by Godard’s remarks in the press.

27
.
Le Monde
, April 22, 1966.

28
. When Charles de Gaulle became president in the new president-centered Fifth Republic in 1958, his “election” to the seven-year term of office was by a yes-no referendum. That new constitution called for future presidential elections to be held only among a council of “notables,” the approximately seventy-five thousand elected officials at all levels of government throughout France. It was not amended to require a popular vote until September 1962.

29
. And indeed, in late 1967, the National Assembly voted to lift the ban.

30
. Godard saw the play at the Théâtre de Poche, in Montparnasse, which belonged to Godard’s friend Antoine Bourseiller, and which Godard had helped him buy. Godard had requested that Bourseiller allow him to attend rehearsals; Godard cast one of the play’s actors, Yves Afonso, in a bit part; he also had Bourseiller play a scene alongside Brigitte Bardot, in which Bourseiller, playing himself, was discussing lines from a play with Bardot, also as herself.

31
. The adaptation is close, not identical, to the corresponding lines from Jones’s play.

32
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 173.

33
.
Elle
, February 10, 1966.

34
.
Masculine Feminine
, p. 59.

35
.
Elle
, February 10, 1966.

36
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 172.

37
.
Elle
, February, 10, 1966.

38
.
Le Monde
, April 23, 1966.

39
. Vianey,
En attendant Godard
, p. 82.

40
.
Pariscope
, January 19, 1966.

41
.
Les Lettres françaises
, April 21, 1966.

42
. Eustache did not write for the magazine; his wife was a secretary there, and Eustache was a regular presence at the office.

43
.
Pariscope
, March 16, 1966.

44
.
Les Lettres françaises
, April 21, 1966.

45
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, July 1966; in
Masculine Feminine
, pp. 261–62.

46
.
Les Inrockuptibles
, September 25, 1991.

47
.
Candide
, no. 261.

48
.
Candide
, May 23, 1966.

49
.
Village Voice
, September 29, 1966.

50
.
Village Voice
, October 6, 1966.

51
.
The New Republic
, November 19, 1966, in Kael,
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
, p. 127.

52
. Vianey, interview by author, June 7, 2000.

53
.
Le Figaro littéraire
, January 19, 1967.

54
.
Le Monde
, supplement, February 1, 1967.

55
. Willy Kurant, interview by author, September 10, 2001.

56
.
Le Nouvel Observateur
, August 26, 1993.

57
. Anne Wiazemsky, interview by author, February, 20, 2003.

58
.
Le coup de foudre
—the French expression for “love at first sight.”

59
. Wiazemsky, interview by author, February 20, 2003.

Chapter Fourteen:
Made in USA, Two or Three Things I Know About Her