Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (134 page)

3
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, August 1963.

4
.
Le Matin Magazine
, May 10–11, 1980.

5
. Ibid.

6
.
G par G
, vol. 1, p. 603;
L’Autre Journal
, January 1985.

7
. Barbie was imprisoned and died in jail in 1991.

8
. Interview with François Albéra,
CinemAction
, no. 52, 1989.

9
. Godard,
L’Humanité du cinéma
(unpublished manuscript);
A voix nue
, radio interviews with Godard by Noël Simsolo.

10
. That transcription occurred in 1999, when the sound track of
Histoire(s)
was released as a set of audio CDs, accompanied by a “libretto” featuring the text in the original French, plus English, German, and Italian translations. Also,
Le Monde
published excerpts from Godard’s voice-over as if it were an essay; December 15, 1994.

11
. Duhamel, interview by author, September 8, 2001.

12
.
Libération
, May 11, 1987.

13
.
Le Monde
, May 21, 1988.

14
. Nicolas Seydoux, interview by author, February 19, 2006.

15
. Ibid.

16
. Bonnell, interview by author, June 25, 2002.

17
. Ibid.

18
.
Le Monde
, May 6, 1989.

Chapter Twenty-five:
Nouvelle Vague

1
.
Le Matin
, March 9, 1987.

2
. Karmitz, interview by author, April 27, 2001.

3
.
Le Monde
, December 30, 1987.

4
. Karmitz, interview by author, April 27, 2001.

5
. Godard, interview by author, June 9, 2000.

6
. Seydoux, interview by author, January 19, 2006.

7
.
Le Monde
, December 30, 1987.

8
. Duhamel, interview by author, September 8, 2001.

9
. “I found, I still find, nothing more admirable than the word of Valentin Feldman to the German soldier who insulted him while taking him to be shot: “Imbecile, it’s for you that I die.” (Claude Roy,
Moi je
, p. 469).

10
. Cinémathèque Suisse.

11
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 190.

12
. Godard, interview by author, June 9, 2000.

13
.
Libération
, May 18, 1990.

14
. Ibid.

15
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, April 1996.

16
.
Libération
, August 24, 1996.

17
. Lubtchansky, interview by author, September 12, 2001.

18
.
G par G
, vol. 2, pp. 193–94.

19
. Press conference from Cannes, 1990 (
Cahiers du cinéma
, June 1990).

20
. Here Godard uses the words of the famous Hemingway/Fitzgerald repartee but revises their meaning: the daughter doubts the difference on the basis of a common humanity, while the mother asserts the fact of the rich having more money as a significant and real difference.

21
. Press conference, Toronto Film Festival, September 1996: http://www.mediapolis.com/ecm-cgi-bin/background?1600.

22
.
Télérama
, November 1996. http://www.mediapolis.com/ecm-cgi-bin/background?1600.

23
. In
Nouvelle Vague
, Godard also included excerpts of Schoenberg’s
Transfigured Night
and chamber music by Paul Hindemith, but it was the music of ECM’s group of contemporary composers (including Darling, Pärt, Heinz Holliger, and Meredith Monk) that dominated.

24
. Jean Schwarz, interview by author, February 17, 2003. Schwarz’s music also figured in
Detective
and
Comment ça va
.

25
.
Cahiers du cinéma
, June 1990.

26
.
L’Humanité
, May 19, 1990.

27
.
The Nation
, February 18, 1991.

28
.
New York Times
, September 29, 1990.

29
. June 6, 1989; broadcast in November and December 1989 on France Culture radio.

30
.
Le Monde
, September 5, 1991.

31
. CS clipping.

Chapter Twenty-six:
Germany Year 90 Nine Zero

1
. In the end, Godard and John Boorman made films in the series, which was to comprise Italian and Russian films as well (but did not).
Le Monde
, November 4, 1991.

2
.
Le Monde
, September 5, 1991.

3
. Ibid., August 9, 1993.

4
.
Construire
(Zurich), October 23, 1991.

5
. The title of a book by critic Lotte Eisner about the German cinema of the Weimar era.

6
.
Le Monde
, September 5, 1991.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Text from collection of Romain Goupil.

9
. Goupil, interview by author, June 15, 2001.

10
. Text from collection of Romain Goupil.

11
. Goupil, interview by author, June 15, 2001.

12
.
Le Monde
, September 5, 1991.

13
. Goupil, interview by author, June 15, 2001.

14
.
Réalités neuchâteloises
(Geneva), September 3, 10, 17, 1992.

15
.
Le Monde
, September 5, 1991.

16
. The French is
plaques de ceinturon
.

17
. Jean Girandoux,
Siegfried et le Limousin
(Grasset/Lirre de Poche, 1962), pp. 145–46.

18
. This quote from Raymond Chandler had figured in
Grandeur et décadence
.

19
.
Le Monde
, September 13, 1991.

20
. Ibid., September 5, 1991.

21
. Goupil, interview by author, June 15, 2001.

22
. Anne-Marie Faux, interview by author, November 28, 2001.

23
.
Le Nouveau Quotidien
(Swiss), April 2, 1992;
Le Matin
(Swiss), April 2, 1992;
Schweizer Handelszeitung
(Zurich), April 29, 1993.

24
.
Komsomolskaya Pravda
, February 29, 1992 (French translation in CS).

25
.
Kultura
(Moscow), February 15, 1992 (CS).

26
.
Le Monde
, July 5, 1992.

27
.
L’Humanité
, April 23, 1993;
Variety
, April 16, 1993.

28
. Neither did Russell.

29
. Champetier, interview by author, June 27, 2001.

Chapter Twenty-seven:
Hélas pour moi, JLG/JLG, Histoire(s) du cinéma
, Parts 2 and 3

1
. Jean-Luc Godard,
L’Humanité du cinéma
;
A voix nue
, radio interviews with Noël Simsolo.

2
. As early as 1975, when he planned to make a film about cancer, he had sought financing from the Centre National de recherche scientifique (CNRS) but was rejected.

3
.
Télérama
, September 4, 1985

4
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 280;
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1993.

5
. Bergala, interview by author, November 27, 2001.

6
.
G par G
, vol. 2, pp. 219, 280.

7
.
Le Monde
, October 8, 1991.

8
. http://www.scerern.fr/revueTDC/907-77658.htm (an interview with Serge Toubiana);
Le Monde, October 30, 1992
.

9
. Yet Godard did not return the funds advanced to him for the first year of affiliation with La fémis, and nobody asked about it—for the time being. And when somebody did, late in the decade, his
Histoire(s) du cinéma
would come back into the equation.

10
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 250.

11
. Bergala, interview by author, November 27, 2001.

12
.
Le Figaro
, December 11, 1990.

13
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 36.

14
. Ibid., p. 269.

15
. Ibid., p. 274.

16
. Ibid., p. 271. Remarkably, the poem concludes with a lament for the “happy people” in the “California woods” whose innocent bliss is destroyed by the arrival of Europeans, i.e., a complaint about the United States.

17
.
La Croix
, September 1, 1993; the actual line from the book: “For a woman who loves her man, is not every man the shadow of God?”

18
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 278;
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1993.

19
. Champetier, interview by author, June 27, 2001.

20
.
G Par G
, vol. 2, p. 274;
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1993.

21
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 322.

22
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 274;
Cahiers du cinéma
, October 1993.

23
. Champetier, interview by author, June 27, 2001.

24
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 283.

25
.
Les Inrockuptibles
, October 1993.

26
.
Première
, November 1999.

27
. Champetier, interview by author, June 27, 2001.

28
.
L’Evènement du jeudi
, September 2–8, 1993.

29
. Godard had considered filming
L’Histoire du Soldat
in 1962.

30
.
Liberation
, September 8, 1993.

31
.
Le Monde
, August 26, 1993.

32
. Ibid., September 10, 1993.

33
.
Les Inrockuptibles
, October 1993.

34
. Ibid.

35
.
New York Times
, March 18, 1994.

36
. Godard,
L’Humanité du cinéma
(unpublished); interview with Noël Simsolo,
France-Culture, À Voix nue
, 1989–1998.

37
. Ibid.

38
.
Film Journal
(New York), July 1994.

39
.
Le Matin
, January 23, 1985.

40
. L’Invité du jeudi, September 17, 1981, “maudit”—cursed, despised.

41
. Even if it is arguable that the leaders of the American film industry in the nineteen thirties and forties, who were predominantly Jewish, critically failed the Jews of Europe who were facing extermination—that Hollywood producers didn’t flood the market with exposés of the Nazi regime, which came to power in 1933—Godard does not make this point in such terms.

42
.
Women’s Wear Daily
, October 8, 1980.

43
. It was also the occasion for a postponement of another publication:
Son
+
Image
featured a biographical sketch of Godard by MacCabe of the British Film Institute, who had been working on an authorized biography; but the sketch contained information that Godard and Miéville claimed not to have given him, and Godard de-authorized MacCabe. MacCabe, interview by author, January 31, 2001. (After a seven-year hiatus, MacCabe resumed work on his book, which, as
A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy
, was published in 2003.)

44
.
Film Comment
, March–April 1995.

45
. He uses titles referring to the abbé Sieyès’s comments on the Third Estate during the French Revolution: “What is the cinema? Nothing. What does it want? Everything. What can it do? Something.”

46
.
Le Monde
, August 13, 1995. Indeed, Godard’s expressions of displeasure at the caliber of the discussion were sufficiently strong for one of the more experienced spectators, Jean-Michel Frodon, then the film critic of
Le Monde
(now editor of
Cahiers du cinéma
), to consider Godard to have displayed “a need to break the possibility of meaning and to break the possibility of dialogue.” Jean-Michel Frodon, interview by author, September 14, 2001.

47
.
G par G
, vol. 2, p. 404.

Chapter Twenty-eight:
For Ever Mozart, Histoire(s) du cinéma
, Part 4

1
. Webern stepped outside his door to smoke a cigar; in violation of the curfew, he was shot. This occurred not in Vienna but in Mittersill, a town near Salzburg.

2
. Press conference, “Films d’un peu partout causant français,” Film Festival, Beaujolais, 1996.

3
.
Le Monde
, May 20, 1994.

4
. Press conference, “Films d’un peu partout causant français,” Film Festival, Beaujolais, 1996.

5
. Bérangère Allaux, interview by author, April 15, 2001.

6
. Goupil, interview by author, June 15, 2001.

7
. Frédéric Pierrot, interview by author, April 16, 2001.

8
. Allaux, interview by author, April 15, 2001.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid.

11
. The French words are
nichons, nibars, roploplos
.

12
. Allaux, interview by author, April 15, 2001.

13
. Ibid.