Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (73 page)

Godard contended that video was a superior medium because editing on film was limited to placing the images sequentially, whereas video permitted superimposition of multiple images, or the incrusting of one image within another, directly in the editing room, without the cumbersome, inexact, time-consuming, and expensive intermediary of a special-effects studio. He considered the ability to see two images at once, by means of video editing, to be a crucial tool of visual analysis, since it permits “thinking two aspects together, to think montage, to think mixing.” Since the 1950s, Godard had conceived of montage not principally as a succession of images but as the simultaneous appearance of distinct ideas in a single image (“At the same

Anne-Marie Miéville
(Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. “Soft and Hard [A Soft Conversation on Hard Subjects],” 1985. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix [EAI], New York)

time, the weather is nice and the train enters the station”).
³
But now, Godard hoped to use video to render such simultaneities explicit and to study them.

In dense philosophical language, Godard introduced a series of examples drawn from the history of cinema, with references to Griffith, Eisenstein, and Vertov, and the social history of their times. He argued that by means of video superimpositions, he could prove visually that these directors’ aesthetics, their style, were inseparable from the political contexts in which they worked. For Godard, whose cinematic ideas were imbued with impressions from the history of cinema, the ability to extract the politics latent in his predecessors’ work was essential to understanding his own personal and political journey.

The mere fact that Godard acknowledged his dependence on the history of cinema was a sign that, after his years of self-imposed exile in the dogmatic wilderness, he was indeed returning to himself (thanks to a new approach to the classic cinema that Gorin had inspired). But the proposal also included a new metaphorical element which suggested that, instead of going back, he was moving ahead, both intellectually and artistically, into un-charted waters.

In his CNC proposal, Godard argued that superimpositions are important not only for the cinema but also for
biology
. As an example, he reproduced in the proposal a one-line telegram, which featured seven lines of Western Union code at the top of the message. He compared the message to the genetics and the phenomenon of reverse transcription, the form of genetic transmission specific to a retrovirus. In Godard’s analysis, it is not the telegram’s code that conveys the message, but the message that surreptitiously conveys the code, which is replicated and transmitted by the recipient. In effect, Godard was arguing that the aesthetics of cinema were inherently political, that movies passed along to their viewers a secret ideological code that viewers then, in their own communications, also passed along; he was refashioning his ideological advocacy as a theory of communication.

This analysis was a radically dialectical version of Godard’s early insight that “at the cinema, we do not think, we are thought”: his idea was to use the technique of video editing to reveal, analyze, and, ultimately, counteract the formal codes with which viewers like himself were unconsciously afflicted.

Although Godard would subject these abstract notions to a variety of modifications in the years to come, they would remain at the heart of his most important projects, which would be made on videotape and rely on the special effects of video editing. These ideas and the work that resulted would ultimately provide Godard with the creative impetus that would return him to the mainstream of the French film industry—and help him make films about himself that were even more direct and self-revealing than those of the
1960s. But the CNC was evidently bewildered by Godard’s application for
Moi je;
the project won no financing,
⁴
and, as he had done so often at critical moments in his career, Godard took his troubles public.

In the July–August 1973 issue of
Cinéma Pratique
, the principal French magazine devoted to amateur and Super-8 filmmaking,
⁵
Godard expressly redefined his aims away from the political back toward the personal: “I have noticed, after fifteen years of cinema, that the true ‘political’ film that I would like to accomplish would be a film about myself to show my wife and my daughter what I am—in other words, a family film.” (Godard was referring to Miéville and her daughter, Anne, despite his still being married to Wiazemsky—whom he would not divorce until 1979.)

Godard saw that the obstacle to his “home movies” was financial. He believed that he would have no choice but to create and distribute them on his own, outside the prevailing system, and that he would have to make them in video because it was cheaper: tapes are cheaper per minute than film, require no processing, and can be reused. He imagined that his videos could be rented by small groups of people to watch together, and he understood that this was not likely to be much of a business. “That is why I clearly envision taking a part-time job,” he noted, although doing so was never a serious option.

More than ever, Godard felt isolated from other filmmakers and from the industry. He expressed his frustrated desire to “talk about cinema in a way that’s a little bit different” and, sensing that his connection with the public was cut, knew that he would have to “seek a way to talk, individual to individual.” To break his isolation, Godard sought out a favorite old companion in cinema, albeit in a way that was so peculiarly aggressive and self-serving that it seemed almost solipsistic.

François Truffaut’s new film,
La nuit américaine
(
Day for Night
), about the life lived by a crew while making a film, opened in Paris on May 24, 1973. Godard saw it and, on June 1, he sent Truffaut a three-page letter about it (also enclosing a note for Jean-Pierre Léaud, the film’s star). Calling Truffaut a “liar” for what he had chosen to leave out of
Day for Night
, Godard demanded that his old friend, in effect, make amends by giving him money to make a film in response. Instead of an extended hand, Godard proferred both a slap and an outstretched palm. Truffaut responded in kind, giving vent to fifteen years of pent-up grudges in a twenty-page letter of venomous fury. The two men never spoke amicably again.

So, at least, the exchange appears on a cursory reading. But the letter to which Truffaut responded so vehemently was, from different angles, several different kinds of communication. It was, certainly, a reproach and a demand; but it was also a plea and a nostalgic wink of complicity, an extended
hand as well as, plainly and simply, a sketch for a film. Truffaut saw only the reprimand and answered accordingly. Although Godard’s approach to Truffaut was insensitive, Truffaut’s response was no less so: Godard poorly read the man, but perhaps Truffaut poorly read the letter.

Lacking the customarily ingratiating tone of a request for financial help, Godard’s letter also had none of the warmth of a proposed reunion. Instead, it was a provocation, even an insult: Truffaut is “a liar,” Godard wrote: “be-cause the shot of you and of Jacqueline Bisset the other night chez Francis [a restaurant] is not in your film, and one wonders why the director is the only one who doesn’t fuck in
Day for Night
.” Godard then describes the counter-film that he had in mind:

At the moment I am in the process of shooting a thing called
A Simple Film
, it shows in a simple way (in your way, Verneuil’s, Chabrol’s, etc.) the other people who make movies, and how these “others” do it. How your intern dials the phone, how the guy from Eclair carries bags, how the old man from Publidecor paints the ass [in the ad] for [
Last
]
Tango
[on a billboard], how Rassam’s receptionist dials numbers, how Malle’s accountant lines up the numbers, and each time, we compare the sound and the image, the sound of the messenger and the sound of Deneuve that he carries [when he transports a film], Léaud’s numbers for his linked images, and the welfare numbers of the unpaid intern, the sexual output of the old man from Publidecor and that of Brando, the accountant’s daily budget and that of
La Grosse Bouffe
[by director Marco Ferreri], etc.

Godard complained that money “reserved” for him went into big-budget films by Truffaut, Malle, Ferreri, Rassam, and others, and thus asked Truffaut to enter into coproduction with him (“The film costs about $40,000 and is produced by Anouchka and TVAB Films (my company with Gorin). Can you enter into coproduction for $20,000? for $10,000?
⁶
Given
Day for Night
, you should help me, so that viewers don’t think that films are only made your way.” Godard offered in exchange his own rights in
La Chinoise, Le Gai Savoir
, and
Masculine Feminine
, and concluded, “If you want to talk it over, fine.”

Truffaut’s twenty-page answer, accusatory and rebarbative, was filled with large, scratchily formed handwriting, as if it had been put together in great haste. It began:

Jean-Luc.
   So as not to oblige you to read this disagreeable letter to the end, I begin with the essential: I will not enter into coproduction in your film.
   Second, I am returning your letter to Jean-Pierre Léaud: I have read it and find it disgusting. It is because of this that I feel that the time has come to tell you, at length, that in my view you behave like a shit.

Godard’s letter for Léaud had been enclosed in an unsealed envelope. It was also a request for money, and this, in particular, outraged Truffaut, who considered it indecent for Godard to ask a poorer, younger man for help, particularly one who had both worked for Godard and greatly admired him. It is unclear what prevented Godard from contacting Léaud directly, though the association of the actor with Truffaut was incontrovertible and significant.

Truffaut admitted, in his angry letter, to retaining some vestigial affection for Godard; he had stayed in his office one Saturday several years earlier to hear a new radio interview with Godard, and he brought up a few fond moments from their earlier days (“I’ve never forgotten how you used to get rid of centimes by slipping them down the backs of chairs in cafés”). Despite what he called Godard’s “posturing,” Truffaut thought that he had genuinely “changed quite a bit” recently, and confessed that had it not been for the enclosed note to Léaud, he would have been inclined to welcome the letter.

Instead, Truffaut dredged up a litany of accusations, professional and personal, that had been silently brewing for years. He repeatedly called Godard a “shit”; he brought up offhanded remarks from long ago that had stung him as well as charges of attempted seductions by Godard from more than a decade earlier—of bit player Liliane David from
Breathless
and of Catherine Ribeiro from
Les Carabiniers
(“I am enumerating all this to remind you not to forget anything in your truthful film about cinema and sex”). He reproached Godard for not showing up at film festivals he had promised to attend (“you don’t go, to surprise people, to astonish them, like Sinatra, like Brando, you’re nothing but a piece of shit on a pedestal”), for calling the producer Pierre Braunberger a “dirty Jew,” for leaving crew members feeling useless on the set when Godard ran off without shooting, for having given the instructions for Molotov cocktails in
Wind from the East
, for chickening out of selling
La Cause du peuple
when there was danger of arrest.

In the letter, Truffaut reproached Godard not for his politics but for the behavior that went with it: “Anyone who has a different opinion from yours is a creep, even if the opinion you hold in June is not the same one you held in April. In 1973, your prestige is intact, which is to say, when you walk into an office, everyone studies your face to see if you are in a good mood.”

Truffaut criticized what he saw as Godard’s political publicity-seeking: “You have never succeeded in loving anyone or in helping anyone,” he charged, “other than by shoving a few banknotes at them,” whereas he himself, he asserted, helped people in need by offering private assistance rather
than public agitations (“Between your interest in the masses and your own narcissism there’s no room for anything or anyone else”). Truffaut cited numerous instances where he had come to Godard’s aid, even without Godard’s knowledge, as when the writer Alberto Moravia wanted Truffaut to take over as the director of
Contempt
. Truffaut called Godard “both jealous and envious” of him, despite his own desire “to remain friends.” He reproached Godard for the 1968 letter in which Godard wrote demanding money due from the production of
Two or Three Things
, and concluded, “In any case, we no longer agree about anything.” Truffaut said he had taken Godard at his word and had closed the book on him (“I’ve felt nothing but contempt for you ever since.”)