University of St Andrews Université de Perpignan – Via Domitia
Erasmus Mundus Masters Crossways in European Humanities
Cinematic Cities: Paris in the Early Films of Jean-Luc Godard
Analysis of A bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, Alphaville and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle
Student: Marina Šišak Supervisors: Dr. Elise Hugueny-Léger (University of St Andrews) Dr. Isabelle Cases (Université de Perpignan – Via Domitia) Academic year: 2008-2009
DECLARATION
I, Marina Šišak, hereby certify that this dissertation, which is 22,084 words in length, has been written by me, that it is a record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. All sentences or passages quoted in this dissertation from other people's work (with or without trivial changes) have been placed within quotation marks, and specifically acknowledged by reference to author, work and page. I understand that plagiarism – the unacknowledged use of such passages – will be considered grounds for rejection of the dissertation, and, if serious and/or persistent, may render the candidate ineligible to receive the Mundus degree. I also affirm that, with the exception of the specific acknowledgements, this dissertation is entirely my own work.
Signature:
Date: 19 October 2009
2
ABSTRACT
The present work examines the role of cities in cinema and the ways of analysing them. It examines their convergences and explores their different aspects. It brings together Henri Lefebvre’s theory of urban space of and Gilles Deleuze’s film theory and argues that similarities of real and cinematic cities lay in their dependence on the dimensions of time and movement and in the fact that they are both products and producers of space/reality. These theories are used in the analysis of representations of Paris in Godard’s early phase: A bout de souffle (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Alphaville (1965) and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967). It is argued that these cinematic cities are firmly based in reality, by including procedures used in documentary films. However, they also transgress it, by emphasising their invented and intertextual side. Moreover, the formal analysis of these cities proves their significant differences, connected with historical and social turbulences of French society in the 60s, as well as with the profound transformation in Paris architecture and city planning. They are also induced by important changes in French cinema, in particular by the New Wave movement. Consequently, Godard’s attitudes towards cinema and directors (the auteur policy) and towards popular and classical culture significantly change, which can be seen in the shift of these cinematic cities from beautiful to repulsive, from personal to historical and from influencing the characters to absorbing them. The city’s importance in the narrative also grows with these changes. Nevertheless, the analysis shows Godard’s continuity and persistence in an always subversive response to society and a highly individual approach to cinema. The latter is mostly expressed in Godard’s preoccupation with creating art that would change/produce society, in which these cinematic cities prove to succeed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank:
My supervisors, Dr Hugueny-Léger and Dr Cases, for guiding and correcting the present dissertation, giving me important suggestions and remarks and encouraging me in my work. I am particularly indebted to Dr Cases and her class ‘Coupes et plans’, for giving me a significant insight in different ways of approaching cinematic cities and providing an important source of information on the topic. My friend Lana, for linguistic suggestions and the time and effort she spent on reading and commenting on this work. My Crossways friends and particularly Alessandra and Snežana, for their constant encouragement and support. My family, for believing in me and for being such a tremendous support.
Ivan, for his love and patience and for ‘living’ through this dissertation with me.
Godard and Karina, for the beauty.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 4
INTRODUCTION ...... 8
METHODOLOGY...... 10 STRUCTURE ...... 12
CHAPTER 1: CINEMATIC CITIES ...... 13
1. CONVERGENCES OF CINEMA AND THE CITY ...... 13 Parallel development ...... 13 Cinema halls ...... 15 Production ...... 16 Architect-director ...... 17 Experiencing (cinematic) cities: time and movement ...... 18 2. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF CINEMATIC CITIES ...... 19 The city as a document ...... 19 Invented (intertextual) city ...... 21 3. PARIS ON FILM ...... 24
CHAPTER 2: PARIS AND GODARD IN THE 1960S ...... 26
1. CHANGES OF THE POST-WAR PERIOD ...... 27 2. PARIS: CHANGES IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING ...... 29 3. CHANGES IN CINEMA: THE NEW WAVE PHENOMENON ...... 33 Technical innovations and cinemaphilia ...... 33 Documentary approach ...... 35 Reception and the end of the movement ...... 36 4. THE CHANGING ASPECTS OF GODARD’S CAREER ...... 37
5 CHAPTER 3: THE (UN)ATTRACTIVE CITY CENTRE: PARIS IN A BOUT DE SOUFFLE AND VIVRE SA VIE ...... 40
1. FASCINATION WITH THE DECOR: THE CITY’S IMPORTANCE IN THE NARRATIVE . 41 2. CHOICE OF PLACES: PARISIAN LANDMARKS AND ANONYMOUS PLACES ...... 43 The city centre and its landmarks ...... 43 The periphery ...... 44 Anonymous places ...... 45 3. CHARACTERS IN THE CITY ...... 48 4. PARIS: BETWEEN A DOCUMENTARY AND A MYTH ...... 50 Paris as a document ...... 50 The invented and intertextual Paris ...... 52 5. THE LIVED SPACE OF GODARD’S PARIS: CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 54
CHAPTER 4: PERIPHERY AND THE FEARS OF MODERNITY: PARIS IN ALPHAVILLE AND DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE ...... 56
1. THE CITY AS A CHARACTER AND A THEME ...... 57 2. CHOICE OF PLACES ...... 59 Exterior places: the periphery ...... 59 Interior places ...... 61 3. THE FUSION OF CHARACTERS AND THE CITY ...... 63 4. THE CITY: DOCUMENTARY AND INVENTED ...... 65 Paris as a document ...... 65 Invented and intertextual city ...... 68 5. LIVED SPACE AND CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 69
CONCLUSION ...... 71
APPENDIX I: FILM STILLS ...... 75
APPENDIX II: FILMOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC GODARD (1955-1967) ...... 79
APPENDIX III: FILM CREDITS ...... 80
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 83
FILMOGRAPHY ...... 88
6
Mais Paris est un véritable océan. Jetez-y la sonde, vous n’en connaîtrez jamais la profondeur. Parcourez-le ; décrivez-le ! quelque soin que vous mettiez à le parcourir, à le décrire ; quelque nombreux et intéressés que soient les explorateurs de cette mer, il s’y rencontrera toujours un lieu vierge, un antre inconnu, des fleurs, des perles, des monstres, quelque chose d’inouï, oublié par les plongeurs littéraires.
Honoré de Balzac (Le père Goriot)
INTRODUCTION
La ville d’un film ressemble souvent à un collage cubiste, tant le cinéma permet d’associer, par l’esprit, des parties, rues, quartiers, bâtiments, que dans la réalité n'auraient guère l'occasion de coexister les uns avec les autres.
Thierry Jousse (La ville au cinéma, 2005)
Ce qui m’aide à trouver des idées, c’est le décor. Souvent, même, je pars de là (…) On ne vit pas de la même façon dans des décors différents. Nous vivons sur les Champs-Elysées...
Jean-Luc Godard (in : Bergala, Godard au travail, 1962)
As the quotations above prove, recurrence of cities in cinema, their significance in shaping the narrative and their complex relationship with the real appear as an important subject of research in film studies. Analysis of cinematic cities is based on the analysis of space in film; nevertheless it includes a broader interdisciplinary research, comprising works from social sciences, architecture, urbanism, history or ethnology and even psychology. Cinematic cities are firmly based in reality; they are shaped and influenced by it, especially when filmed on location. However, they are never objective and, as the first quotation above suggests, they are distorted and sometimes completely detached from it. Cinema and the cities are correlated in many ways. Henri Lefebvre argued that cities were both products (of the urban planners or the government) and producers (of social practices of their inhabitants). Moreover, he claimed that urban space was inseparable from the energy and time of their inhabitants or visitors.1 In the same way, cinematic cities can be considered as both products (of reality and of the directors’ personal vision) and producers of
1 Henri Lefebvre, La production de l'espace (Paris: Anthropos, 2000).
8 space: recent trends in this field have put an emphasis on the fact that cinematic cities both represent and shape their real counterparts by influencing the spectators/inhabitants’ conception of the city and, consequently, by changing the way they inhabit or discover it.2 Gilles Deleuze’s film theory corresponds in many ways Lefebvre’s conception of urban space, since it states that films are formed of time-images and movement-images and, consequently, the space in film should be analysed primarily from the aspects of time and movement (of characters, camera, editing or composition).3
The work of Jean-Luc Godard is a very rewarding field of research for this sort of analysis: the films of his early phase (1956-1967)4 were deeply preoccupied with representation of Paris (out of fifteen feature films he made in this period, eleven were shot there).5 Moreover, the director’s fascination and interest in the city, announced in the quotation above, can mostly be seen in the films that directly deal with the city’s phenomenology (such as Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, 1965 and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle: elle – la region parisienne, 1967). Since Godard often approached the cities in a manner of a researcher or a journalist (as in Vivre sa vie: le film en douze tableaux, 1962),6 his films were deeply inscribed in their historical, social and cultural milieu and can be examined in depth only by taking those instances into account. Finally, some films (mostly A bout de souffle, 1960) had an important impact on French society and French cinema of the period and played a significant cultural role. Consequently, they influenced the spectators’ perception of real Paris, as well as depictions of some other cinematic cities. A bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, Alphaville and Deux ou trois choses were chosen based on the importance of cities in the narrative, on the cities’ connection with the real and imaginary and on their impact on the spectators. These films were made at crucial and changing moments in Godard’s career which, according to Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, were
2 Especially in: Guiliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film (New York: Verso, 2007); Myrto Konstantarakos (ed.), Spaces in European Cinema, (Exeter: Intellect, 2000) and Barbara Mennel, Cities and Cinema (London: Routledge, 2008). 3 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, transl. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Continuum, 2004) and Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, transl. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: The Athlone Press, 2000). 4 This chronology is used in all Godard’s monographs and film histories. It is marked, on the one hand, by his first short and feature films and, on the other hand, by his radical shift in 1968, when he turned to making militant films for several years. The complete Godard's filmography of the period (short films included) is listed in Appendix II. 5 Only Le petit soldat (1963) , Les Carabiniers (1963), Le Mépris (1963) and Pierrot le fou (1965) were filmed on other locations. 6 Later in the text: Alphaville, Deux ou trois choses and Vivre sa vie.
9 characterised by the director’s shifts in attitudes towards cinema and French society.7 Nevertheless, the most important factor in choosing these films was their differences. The thing that we found most intriguing was that these cinematic cities significantly vary in style, atmosphere, genre, realism, relationship with the characters, choice of places and attitudes. In A bout de souffle, the city centre is celebrated, whereas in Vivre sa vie it becomes a place of prostitution and social problems. Alphaville is a dystopian representation of a futuristic city and in Deux ou trois choses Godard films almost exclusively the empty and monotonous Parisian suburbs. The aim of this research is to discover the reason why the same director filmed the same city in a relatively short period of time and made such significantly different cinematic cities. Moreover, we want to investigate the influences that social and historical circumstances, as well as urban transformations of Paris at the time, had on these different depictions. We will also examine the role played by film heritage/other cinematic cities through history and by the French film industry in the 60s (in particular the impact of the New Wave movement). We will focus on the changes in Godard’s personal path as author and attempt to discover how they were reflected and transgressed in these four cinematic cities. Finally, we will explore the impact Godard’s Paris had on the spectators and consequently how it produced the ‘real’ city. The present work will combine the theories outlined above by approaching cinematic cities through the spectre of time and movement. The emphasis will be put on a formal analysis of these cinematic cities. We will also focus on their documentary and invented aspects and explore the relationship between them. Cinematic cities as producers will be considered through their impact on spectators and filmmakers (the intertextual aspect of cinematic cities), with an aim to explain Godard’s development as author. However, due to the limited space available in this dissertation, their further influence on the society of the period will only be shortly presented, but hopefully used in some future research.
7 Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Godard et la société française des années 1960 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004).
10 METHODOLOGY
This dissertation was based on the following research:
1) Watching, analysing and comparing Godard’s films of the period, films on Godard, main feature and short films of the most important New Wave directors and directors that influenced Godard artistically. The research was extended to other films where cities had a significant role in the narrative or influenced the spectators greatly, with an aim to explore different directors’ approaches in filming cities. 2) Examining works on film theory, in particular those dealing with space in cinema, in order to explore various methods in approaching the topic. The list of works on cinematic cities was relatively exhaustive; however, mostly articles and chapters from books proved to be relevant for our work and, consequently, various theories were combined. The encyclopaedia La ville au cinema was a comprehensive source of information and an important indicator in this part of our research.8 3) Gathering information on social, historical and urban development of France and Paris in the 60s (books, monographs, articles) and extending the research to Henri Lefebvre’s theories of urban space and urban society. 4) Exploring monographs, magazines, film analysis and articles on the New Wave and on Godard’s work. In this part, our bibliography had to be restricted to most relevant authors, due to a vast number of publications available. Apart from important studies and overviews on the New Wave movement, notably by Michel Marie and Antoine de Baecque,9 Godard’s interviews and articles and Bergala’s book Godard au travail proved to be extremely abundant sources of information that shed new light on Godard’s aims and procedures.10
8 Thierry Jousse, Thierry Paquot (ed.), La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005). 9 Antoine de Baecque, La nouvelle vague: portrait d'une jeunesse (Paris: Flammarion, 1998); Michel Marie, La nouvelle vague: une école artistique (Paris: Nathan, 2000). 10 Jean-Luc Godard, Godard par Godard : les années Karina (1960 à 1967) (Paris: Flammarion, 1990); Alain Bergala, Godard au travail: les années 60 (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2006).
11 STRUCTURE
This dissertation is divided into four chapters, the first two focusing on the theoretical and historical background and the last two on film analysis. Chapter 1 gives a theoretical framework of examining space in cinema. It explores the complex relationship between cinema and cities, through both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Different aspects of cinematic cities are examined and their documentary and invented dimension in particular. In the last part of the chapter, an overview of representations of Paris in French cinema before the New Wave is given. Chapter 2 explores historical, social and urban transformations of France and Paris in the 1960s, focusing on the aspects that influenced Godard’s work. It also deals with changes in cinema (focusing on the New Wave movement) and traces the path of Godard’s career during the period. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 focus on representation of Paris in the four films. Chapter 3 gives a comparative analysis of A bout de souffle and Vivre sa vie, whereas Chapter 4 treats Alphaville and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle. The chapters follow the same structure: after examining the role of cities in the narrative (in the first part), in the second part, we will analyse the choice of places, by putting an emphasis on oppositions between the centre and periphery, interior and exterior and public and private. Relationship between the characters and the city, in particular their movements and their inclusion or exclusion from the city, is examined in the third part. The fourth part of the chapters focuses on the documentary and the invented (intertextual) sides of cinematic Paris. Finally, the fifth part gives remarks on the cities’ power to change space and provides a short conclusion of the previous analysis. The films are examined chronologically in order to demonstrate changes in Godard’s career more clearly and analysed two by two according to their similarities and oppositions (such as centre vs. periphery). However, this does not imply their strict division, but contributes to a clearer demonstration of their differences and transgressions. Conclusion gives a summary of the results of our analysis and relates them more profoundly with the theoretical and historical background, elaborated in the first two chapters. An emphasis will be put on clarifying how, to what extent and why Godard’s Paris changed during the 60s and how it reflected Godard’s shift towards cinema and French society of the period.
12 CHAPTER 1:
CINEMATIC CITIES
From its beginnings, cinema has been closely linked to cities. In 1895, when the Lumières first projected their La sortie des usines Lumière in front of the Parisian audience in the Grand Café on Boulevard des capucines,1 a new art was born. The first film was made in a city (in a street in Lyon now bearing the name ‘rue du Premier-film’) and the first cinematic projection was showed to an urban audience. Cities have remained a recurrent theme in cinema until present, which is certainly due to their many similarities, both physical (industrialism, constructing cinema halls or a double vocation of director-architect) and mental (in terms of producing and re-creating space or experiencing it through time and movement). The aim of this chapter is to examine these similarities, not in order to explore them all (such task probably being impossible), but in order to put forward possible reasons for the recurrence of the city as a theme in cinema. Moreover, different aspects of cinematic cities in terms of their realism and documentary value will be considered, as well as their invented and intertextual aspect, while giving specific examples that influenced Godard’s work. Finally, a short overview of depictions of Paris that preceded the New Wave period will be given.
1. CONVERGENCES OF CINEMA AND THE CITY
Parallel development
Cinema and modern cities are, first of all, contemporaries. The cinematographe was invented in 1895, in a time of industrialisation of modern cities and rapid growth of the urban population. Although cities had already expanded in the first half of the 19th century,2 the need for an urban strategy was only recognised during the last decades of the century. This
1 See: www.institut-lumiere.fr Out of ten films that were projected during this session, nine were filmed in Lyon. (Thierry Frémeaux, ‘Louis Lumière’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 745). 2 Population in Paris grew by 120,000 between 1841 and 1846 (R.E. Lerner, S. Meacham, E. McNall Burns, Western Civilizations (New York/London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1988), p. 755). resulted in a planned development and modernisation of the cities, such as in Baron Haussmann's Paris renovation. After 1870, cities underwent changes that resulted from the second industrial revolution, such as the mass production of steel and electricity readily available in factories and people’s homes, which profoundly changed living conditions and environment of the urban population.3 Steel, iron and glass were more often used as building materials, which opened the way for new types of buildings, such as large exhibition halls or railway-sheds.4 Keeping all these changes in mind, it is easy to presume why early directors were so fascinated with the always-changing cities of the period. Hence, in their first works, the Lumières filmed Lyon, Paris and La Ciotat, but soon sent their operators to film cities all over the world. 5 In La sortie des usines Lumière and in L’arrivée d’un train à la Ciotat (1896), they filmed a factory and a railway station, both symbols of modernity and preconditions to the development of the city. Astonishment with the new types of architecture and means of transportation is also present in the films from the following decades. In Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927) trains, streetcars, cars and factories can be seen, as well as other symbols of modern life such as telephones or typewriters. Similarly, in The Man with a movie camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) fascination with the moving machines, people and means of transportation is reinforced by the fast-pace editing. When analysing early cinematic cities, Barbara Mennel emphasises similar possibilities of cinema and architecture to change perception of time and space. She claims that new means of transportation changed this perception to the 19th century man through the feeling of distance (as technology made journeys faster and consequently, distant destinations closer) and that something similar happened in the film industry, through dissimulation of moving reality.6 Similarly, Guilana Bruno compares the new architectures of ‘transit’, embodying a ‘new spatiovisuality’ (such as railways, arcades, department stores, pavilions of exhibition halls or winter gardens) with the
3 Ibid., pp. 846-849. 4 According to Watkin, the use of new materials reached its climax with the Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition of London in 1851 (David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture, (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000) p. 472). International exhibitions of industry held in other cities popularised new technologies in architecture (in Paris maybe the most famous examples are the Palais d'Industrie, constructed for the exhibition of 1855 and the Eiffel tower that served as entrance to the Exposition Internationale exhibition hall in 1889). Moreover, they exhibited and popularised new industries, including cinema - according to Forbes and Harris, during the exhibition of 1900, more that one million people visited the Lumières pavilion (Jill Forbes and Sue Harris, ‘Cinema’, in: The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture (Cambridge University Press 2003), p. 320). 5 Among others, these newsreels (actualités cinématographiques) showed London, Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Chicago. (Frémeaux, ‘Louis Lumière’, pp. 745-746). 6 Mennel illustrates it with a myth of the first projection of L'arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat, when the spectators ran away from the theatre in fear of being ran over by a running train. (Mennel, Cities and Cinema, p. 2).
14 always moving filmic representation that developed simultaneously. Early cinema was also conscious of these connections, which can be seen in Vertov’s film that celebrates the film industry and in which, in Bruno's words, ‘film animates the city as a real means of transportation’.7
Cinema halls
While Bruno’s analysis concerns cinematic cities, the ‘power of cinema’ also transformed and moved real cities, in more or less ‘physical’ ways. The construction of cinema halls influenced the cities in terms of urban planning. In certain cases, a new type of architecture was created, as some of the halls included cosmetic rooms, smoking galleries and crying rooms, while their extravagant design often attracted more attention than the film itself.8 In Paris, the world’s biggest cinema hall at the time was constructed in 1911 (the Gaumont Palace for 5,500 people). Following the invention of the sound cinema (in 1929), the construction of cinema halls was at its all time high, with an astounding number of halls being built all over France.9 Newly constructed cinema halls also caused certain social changes. As they became new places of social activity and entertainment, they created a new usage of the city and consequently, as Mennel puts forward, reinforced its interpretation as being a place of entertainment and pleasure.10 Furthermore, as some theoreticians emphasise, they had a significant role in the creating mass culture, because they were ‘premier(s) lieu(x) moderne(s) où les masses des villes hétérogènes, anonymes, indéfinies, peuvent se penser comme un public’.11 Early films, primarily intended for urban audience, often filmed their way of life and portrayed cities as spectacular sites of modernity and entertainment. While the Lumières portrayed moments from the everyday life of the urban population, such as going home from
7 Bruno's analysis concerns the sequence where the chairs in the theatre start moving as film progresses, as well as the sequence where the freeze frame shots of people on the street alternate with shots of a woman editing a film: by the end of the sequence, the frames unfreeze, as if the latter shots moved the former (cinema brought the city to life). Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, p. 24. 8 Ibid., p. 48. 9 Sometimes two halls per week were built across France. (Jean-Yves de Lépinay, ‘Cinéphilie’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005). 10 Mennel, Cities and Cinema, p. 6. 11 Miriam Hansen, ‘America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on Cinema and Modernity’ in L. Charney and V. Schwartz, Cinema and Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1995), quoted in: Stéphane Bouquet, ‘Théorie anglo-saxonne’, in: T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 112.
15 work or getting off train, Ruttmann's Berlin turned into a real celebration of urban way of life. Rutmann’s city moves during the day, when its inhabitants work, drive or do sports, but also at night, when the lights of cinema and theatre halls illuminate the city and people watch the shows or go dancing. Despite certain social criticism, the city is depicted as a symphony of movement and lights, ending in a celebratory mode with scenes of fireworks and a giant lighthouse. Cinema halls are the setting of some early films (for example in Ruttmann’s and Vertov’s films) and they will continue to hold an important and somewhat changed role in Godard's New Wave Paris.
Production
Cinema did not only influence the city during its early years. Many contemporary theoreticians point out that, in the same way as urbanism, cinema has the power to produce space.12 Henri Lefebvre was the first one to point out the fact that urban space is not only an abstract and empty concept (‘un contenant sans contenu’),13 but is ‘produced’ like any other merchandise. Lefebvre’s physical space consists of three aspects: conceived (‘espace conçu’), perceived (‘espace perçu’) and lived space (‘espace vécu’).14 Conceived space refers to production of space through a planned strategy of the power structures (government, city planners or scientists) that has significant urban, social and political consequences.15 Furthermore, space is perceived, that is, produced through social practices of its inhabitants. It can only be analysed empirically, by exploring the relationship between the city and the everyday life of its inhabitants.16 The third aspect of Lefebvre’s space is the lived space, the one which is produced through images and symbols of its inhabitants, particularly its artists, writers or philosophers. In The Urban Revolution, he argues that the image of the city ‘tending toward a concept (that is toward an understanding) was discovered through myth, ideology, and utopia’ which, inscribed in the narrative, lead to a new conception of the city.
12 Such as Guiliana Bruno, Mike Davies, Anne Friedberger, Anke Gleber, Miriam Hansen, Janet Ward or Edward Dimendberg (Bouquet, ‘Théorie anglo-saxonne’, pp. 111-114). 13 Lefebvre, La production de l’espace, p. XVII. 14 Ibid., pp. 48 - 50. 15 Lefebvre underlines that Haussman's plan was imperialistic, and was intended to eject the working class from the city centre. (Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, translated by Robert Bononno (Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 109). 16 In order to analyse ‘modern’ society and its perceived space, Lefebvre examines the practices of suburban population (in particular, the one living in the Parisian cités). (Lefebvre, La production de l’espace, p. 48).
16 Moreover, he shows how Paris was discovered, imagined and changed through the works of its 19th century writers and poets.17 In the same way as in literature, cinema has the power to re-imagine and redefine space. Bruno writes: ‘If the urban landscape is a product of the city’s own mapping, it is also a creation of its filmic incarnations (…). A sense of place is actively produced by a constellation of imaginings, which include films’.18 Cinema can, therefore, change places, neighbourhoods and whole cities and give them a new meaning or even affect them economically: a recent and maybe one of the most grotesque examples would be Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008) that incited tourism in the Indian slums. Moreover, a cinematic city is often ideological: according to a survey, the films on Paris made from the beginning of sound cinema include only half of the city’s terrain.19 Likewise, in the analysis of Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935), Comolli shows how Riefenstahl’s highly ideological Nuremberg gave a new meaning to the city, that of a monumental place for the privileged nation. 20
Architect-director
Cinema and cities are correlated through many other aspects. According to Frodon, the work of a director and an architect is very similar, mostly in the constraints to which they have to adapt: those of the material and physical world, of the group of people they work with, of the producer/contractor and of expectations from the public/audience. Although the last characteristic might be a subject of discussion,21 similarities between the two vocations make collaborations between them very frequent. Hence, some famous architects worked as film scenographers, such as Hans Poelzig for The Golem (Paul Wegener, 1920) or Robert Mallet-Stevens for L’Inhumaine (Marcel l’Herbier, 1923). On the other hand, there are
17 Lefebvre mentions Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud in particular. (Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, pp. 107- 108). 18 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, pp. 27 – 28. 19 Susan Hayward, ‘The City as Narrative: Corporeal Paris in Contemporary French Cinema (1950s-1990s)’, in: Myrto Konstantarakos (ed.), Spaces in European cinema, (ed.), (Exeter: Intellect, 2000), p. 31. 20 Jean-Louis Comolli, ‘Documentaire’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), pp. 140 - 141. 21 Hence, certain buildings and urban plans were made without the intention to be housed or even built, like the visionary architecture of the cities of the future or architecture meant to exist only in the digital space (like the one designed for computer games). Although one could always argue that it is not built and therefore, it is not real, there are certainly films not affected by the presumption of the public's expectations (not intended to entertain), as is the case with the 'military' films from Godard's second phase (1968-72), which the author refused to let into traditional distribution.
17 directors who studied architecture or worked as architects before or along with their film careers (such as Fritz Lang, Patrick Keiller or Peter Greenaway) and some of them wrote about hybridisation of the two arts. Hence, in his article on architecture in cinema, Patrick Keiller puts an emphasis not on similarities, but on differences between them. He underlines the subjectivity of filmic representation that can make insignificant architecture appear glorious and vice versa. Whether the decor is real or artificial, a film documentary or entirely fictional, ‘the newness of the spaces of the cinema is a product, not of set-building, but of cinematography’.22 Nevertheless, whereas cinematic cities are primarily subjective and artificial, they also retain a documentary dimension.
Experiencing (cinematic) cities: time and movement
Jean Nouvel, another architect who explored similarities of architecture and cinema, stated: ‘l'architecture existe, comme le cinéma, dans une dimension de temps et de mouvement. On pense, on conçoit et on lit un bâtiment en termes de séquences’.23 Lefebvre already argued that the real, physical space (espace physique) did not exist in itself, as an empty space, but only as a substance of énergie-espace-temps.24 A city can therefore be understood only through wanderings (time) and action (energy) of its inhabitant or visitor, as was the Baudelarian flâneur that, according to Lefebvre, discovered the ‘paradygmatic dimension’ of Paris.25 Furthermore, Hayward shows that we can imagine the city only as a narrative, ‘a space and place where events take place (…); the circulation of bodies, their interaction, is a major referent for our understanding of the city’.26 In the same way, cinematic space can only be experienced through dimensions of time and movement: in his commentary on Bergson, Gilles Deleuze proposes film analysis through the notions of time-images and movement-images, which are inseparable one from another and are determined by the relationship between their parts (shot, frame, camera movement,
22 Patrick Keiller, 'Architectural Cinematography', in: Kester Rattenbury (ed.), This Is Not Architecture (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 43. 23 http://batiweb.com/news/a.asp?ref=08041404, accessed on: 9 March 2009. 24 Lefebvre, La production de l'espace, pp. 20 - 21. 25 Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, p. 107. Wilson describes Baudelarian flâneur of the 19th century as a 'young man who wanders through the city, at once consumed by modern alienation and consuming the visual spectacles of the panorama Paris offers' (Emma Wilson, French Cinema since 1950: Personal Histories (London: Duckworth, 1999), p. 125). 26 Susan Hayward, ‘The City as Narrative: Corporeal Paris in Contemporary French Cinema (1950s-1990s)’, in: Myrto Konstantarakos (ed.), Spaces in European cinema, (Exeter: Intellect, 2000), p. 30.
18 editing) and by their whole (composition).27 Cinematic cities should therefore be examined not only as a posed setting (through analysis of the choice of places) or a set of still images, but through movements of both camera and the characters. Hence, the Baudelarian flâneur meets his cinematic counterpart here: characters form part of the city and are inextricable from it, if they are connected, affected or completely detached from it. In other words, as Hayward puts it, ‘the body’s movement and performance through the city makes the city readable’.28
2. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF CINEMATIC CITIES
The city as a document
Cinematic cities are par excellence artificial and produced; however, they also have a documentary value. As Thierry Jousse puts it, ‘Le cinéma permet un accès privilégié à l'espace urbain, en tant qu'il est un mixte d'espace réel et d'espace mythique’.29 Hence, a cinematic city has something real in it: it bears testimony to a period in history, reflecting its social, cultural and urban reality. These characteristics can best be seen in Italian Neo-realist cinematic cities. As Gilles Deleuze explains, the birth of Neo-realism was due to specific circumstances in Italy after the war, since in these years that followed the Liberation, Italian directors felt free to depict resistance and oppression of the war and post-war period. Moreover, an absence of big production companies and a destruction of many studios during the war paved the way to employing new procedures in filmmaking and to creating a new type of image. Such thing was not possible in a France that wanted to acquire the winner status in the war, while its film industry was strictly linked to large studios.30 According to Bazin, the most important Neo- realist innovations were liberation from the restrictions imposed by big studios, improvisation that replaced a fixed screenplay, employment of non-professional actors and filming on location. The films dealt with contemporary themes and depicted reality through a documentary approach. They also embodied a new type of realism, in which city and
27 Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-image, pp. 7-34. 28 Hayward, ‘The City as Narrative’, p. 31. 29 Thierry Jousse, 'Des villes et des films', in: Thierry Jousse and Thierry Paquot (ed.), La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris : Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 9, with my emphasis. 30 Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-image, p. 211.
19 characters were liberated from the constraints of the plot and not used as a ‘moyen’ for action.31 Similarly, Deleuze writes about pure optical and sound situations that replaced the sensory-motor situations of the old realism. These situations are pre-existent, that is, not induced by action or extended into it, but ‘invested by the senses, before action takes shape in (them), and uses or confronts (their) elements’.32 Moreover, Bazin emphasises the movement’s connection with the real: ‘il est impossible d'en arracher le scénario sans entraîner avec lui tout le terrain social dans lequel il plonge ses racines’.33 Likewise, Roberto Rossellini's Rome in Rome, Open City (1945) and Berlin in Germany, Year Zero (1948) cannot be separated from their historical background and they bear testimony to devastation, oppression and poverty during and after the Second World War. In the same way, Vittorio De Sica in Bicycle thieves (1948) depicted poverty and unemployment in the newly constructed and unfinished outskirts of the post-war Rome and difficulties that its inhabitants faced when trying to adapt to the city centre from which they were excluded. These cities are far from being attractive and they rarely show famous monuments and landmarks. As Bouquet points out, they rather portray secondary streets or everyday places, such as markets, big squares or dwellings.34 Moreover, devastated buildings and empty streets of Rossellini’s Berlin somewhat resemble unfinished and monotonous buildings in De Sica's Roman outskirts. The shooting on location brought these cinematic cities a documentary value: we are presented with images of Berlin in ruins in 1948 and of the outskirts of Rome in their first phases of construction (such as the neighbourhood of Val Melaina in Bicycle thieves). Moreover, social and historical reality of the period is reflected in the characters’ actions and habits: they are resisting political power (the priest Don Pietro and the resistant Giorgio Manfredi in Rome, Open City), struggling to find employment or food (in all the films) or wandering around the city devastated by war (Edmund in Germany Year Zero). In turn, their destinies are greatly affected by the city’s environment and circumstances they live in: Don Pietro and Manfredi are executed by the Nazi army, Edmund jumps off the devastated building and dies, while Ricci (in Bicycle Thieves) loses his employment for having his bicycle stolen and almost ends up in prison for trying to steal one himself. These films are,
31 André Bazin, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ? (Paris : Editions du Cerf, 1999), p. 264. 32 Deleuze, Cinema 2: Time-image, p. 4. He also defines characteristics of the ‘new image’ with ‘dispersive situation, deliberately weak links, voyage form, consciousness of clichés (and) condemnation of the plot’ (Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-image, p. 210). 33 Bazin, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?, p. 263. 34 Stéphane Bouquet, ‘Néo-réalisme’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 190.
20 therefore, directly inscribed into the historical and political context of the war and the post- war period. Neo-realism had a significant impact on the New Wave directors, in technique and procedures (shooting on location, employing non-professional actors), as well as in style (fragmented plot, purely optical and sound situations, unmotivated sequences, camera following the characters and a documentary approach). Godard admired Rossellini in his essays and articles and quoted him in his films (like in Vivre sa vie, Le Mépris, 1963 or Made in U.S.A, 1966) and they collaborated on the screenplay for Godard’s Les Carabiniers (1963).
Invented (intertextual) city
Cinematic cities are based on reality, but they are also ‘mythic’, that is, invented and often ideological. As Keiller points out, cinema can produce space that does not exist anywhere, for example by the editing process.35 Moreover, like the real cities, cinematic cities are a product of ‘constellation of imaginings’. Since every director is a spectator first, s/he adds aesthetics or symbols of other cinematic cities (intertexts) to her/his own depictions. S/he sometimes emphasises these influences or indicates his/her presence in the film by making the filmmaking process visible. This double aspect of cinematic cities (documentary and invented) is reflected in the work of individual directors, as we will show with Godard, but also in the work of particular schools or genres. The Film Noir city and the dystopian city of the science-fiction genre, both of which inspired Godard, illustrate very well these two poles.
Film Noir city
The Film Noir arose from a specific time and place in history. It was a response to the decadence and depression of the American society during and after the Second World War, as it depicted its increasing levels of crime and violence, corrupted politicians and anxiety in front of the fast development of the cities.36 Hence, the Film Noir city is a place of darkness and crime and its characters/inhabitants are usually criminals that meet a tragic end. The
35 Moreover, Keiller states: ‘the space of a film is assembled from fragments, their relationship inferred from cues in action, sound or narrative. Most film space is off screen – it is either remembered from preceding images, or heard, or merely the imaginary extension of the space on screen’. (Keiller, ‘Architectural Cinematography’, p. 38). 36 Jerome Charyn, ‘Film noir : le mythe’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 157.
21 Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950) starts with a shot of empty streets at dawn and a police car looking for a criminal, who is hiding behind the pillars. Other sites in the film include long and dark hallways that lead to the criminals’ apartments, underground tunnels and secondary streets at night. The characters, after robbing jewellery, all end up in prison or die in an attempt to escape. Although being primarily connected with American cinema from the late 30s to the late 50s and with dark images of Los Angeles, Film Noir is also, to an extent, a part of European heritage. It drew on German expressionism, notably by using oppositions of light and dark. Moreover, some Film Noir directors embraced the Neo-realist interest for documentary and their practice to film directly on the street. This mix of genres is well described by Pauline de Chassy who puts the Film Noir on a crossway of gangster films and both neo-expressionist and realist aesthetics, attributing it also a certain nihilism.37 The nihilism and fears from the rapid urban development are detached from its first socio-historical milieu and are constantly reinvented when replaced from it, in a different time or places. Many authors in a recent past have made references to Film Noir and used many of its characteristics: in Taxi driver (1976), Martin Scorcese used similar aesthetics to show a dark postmodernist New York City. Moreover, Film Noir inspired cinemas of other nations: among others, it influenced French directors (Godard included), which transposed its aesthetics into Paris. Hence, although they reflect different historical milieus, Jean-Pierre Melville's Paris in Bob le flambeur (1956) resembles Huston’s Los Angeles in many ways: it starts with panoramic shots of Montmartre at dawn, describing it in a voice-over as both paradise and hell. The characters rob a casino and, same as in Huston’s film, they fail to escape justice.38 Nevertheless, although presented as a city of crime, Melville’s Paris keeps its representative monuments (with the church of Sacré-coeur showed in many scenes), which gives it a distinctive mark that Huston’s city does not have.
Dystopian science-fiction city of the future
A similar detachment from geographical and historical milieu can be seen in the science-fiction genre, in which cities are par excellence imagined: visionary, futuristic or
37 Pauline de Chassey, ‘Film noir : les villes’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 163. 38 However, Bob will probably be released from the prison and, as he says, with a good lawyer he would even sue the police for arresting him. Unlike the other Film Noir heroes, Bob succeeds to escape, but only because of his wealth and his high social status. Hence, it is actually the power of money and not the hero that wins.
22 utopian/dystopian. However, as Fredric Jameson argues, every futuristic city ‘defamiliarizes and restructures our experience of our own present’.39 Nevertheless, it seems that the present/future stays similar, regardless of the fact when the film was made, as Alsayyad shows in his comparative analysis of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926) and Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985). According to Alsayyad, the fear of technology and capitalist society is reflected in two mutual characteristics of these cities – in both of them the modernist architecture dominates urban landscape and inhabitants are kept under surveillance of the power structures that want to keep the society under control.40 Moreover, inhabitants are uniformed and individuality is suppressed, if not forbidden. Hence, although filmed in different times and inspired by different places,41 these futuristic cities are identical in their dystopia. Similarly, Lefebvre points out that all science-fiction cities in literature are bleak and despondent: ‘the city of the future is broken; it proliferates as a disease afflicting humanity and space, a medium for vice, deformation, and violence’.42 Although inspired primarily with George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Gilliam was probably influenced by Metropolis. The latter has been an inspiration to some New Wave directors: for example, Jacques Rivette quoted it in Paris nous appartient (1960), alluding to the idea that contemporary Paris was embodying similar fears and evils. Its characteristics are also visible in Godard’s Alphaville. Moreover, Godard was in many ways inspired by Fritz Lang’s work: he interviewed him in Le dinosaure et le bébé (1967) and even dedicated him a character in Le Mépris (1963). Many science-fiction cities transcend their connections with the historical and the documentary and tend to the fictional, which can be seen in their similar dystopian visions of the future. However, as we will see in Godard’s Alphaville, we can still trace the influences emerging from a specific context, as they are after all primarily ‘restructuring the present’. Hence, all cinematic cities have a double aspect: although fictitious, they are always to some extent a historical document. In other words, as Godard simply puts it: ‘all great fiction films tend towards documentary, just as all great documentaries tend towards fiction’.43
39 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Decline and Fall of Community (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), quoted in: Nezar Alsayyad, Cinematic Urbanism: a History of the Modern from Reel to Real (New York : Routledge, 2006), p. 91. 40 Alsayyad, Cinematic Urbanism, p. 74. 41 According to Alsayyad, Lang found inspiration in both Manhattan and Berlin, while Gilliam depicted Thatcherite England (Ibid., pp. 85-89). 42 Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, p. 114. 43 Alain Bergala (ed.), Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol.1 (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1998), quoted in: Chris Darke, Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965) (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 21-22.
23 3. PARIS ON FILM
Paris, the place of the first cinematic projection and an artistic centre from the beginnings of the century, remained one of the most often portrayed cinematic cities. The article on Paris in La ville au cinéma lists fifty directors, both French and foreign, in whose films Paris held an important role and whose depictions influenced our image of the city. Moreover, the Forum des Images, situated in Parisian Les Halles, keeps a special collection dedicated to films on Paris, counting around 5,500 films.44 As Binh and Lépinay point out, Paris is the setting of every other French film. Moreover, Paris inspired many foreign cinemas, especially American, in which it embodied fantasies of the city of art, love and sexual freedom.45 The Eiffel tower, the Seine, Notre- Dame or the Champs-Elysées are Parisian stars or clichés, presented in many depictions of the city. Nevertheless, the choice of places highly varies: the site of Forum des Images gives a selected classification of films on Paris, depending on the neighbourhoods they depict.46 It is therefore almost impossible to give a coherent overview of Paris on film. In recent films, it is at the same time a fairy tale with Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulin (J.-P. Jeunet, 2001), a musical with Moulin Rouge (B. Luhrmann 2001), the cruel suburbs of La Haine (M. Kassowitz, 1995) and an eclectic portrait of the sketch film Paris, je t’aime (2006). Binh and de Lépinay give, however, a broad chronology of its representations: in the 20s, Paris was the city of art, movement and lights (as in Paris qui dort, R. Clair, 1924). In the 30s it became romantic, introducing love stories which, in combination with fantastic comedies and naturalistic dramas, produced a new genre – that of the poetic realism (notably in Marcel Carné’s films). After the war, nostalgia for the Belle époque prevailed over the contemporary themes. Moreover, detective stories where Paris was a city of darkness and crime started to appear (as in Quai des Orfèvres, H.-G. Clouzot, 1947). In the 50s a tendency towards a revival of sentimental comedies replaced the post-war pessimism.47 Most cinematic representations of Paris, from the invention of sound cinema until the late 50s, were made in studios and were generally highly artificial.48 Furthermore, the so- called cinéma de qualité (expensive films, mostly literary adaptations and costume dramas,
44 See: Collection parisienne, on: www.forumdesimages.fr, accessed on :13 September 2009. 45 N.T. Binh, Jean-Yves de Lépinay, ‘Paris’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 527. 46 ‘Paris ballades’, http://www.forumdesimages.fr/Collections/parcours/P100, accessed on : 13 September 2009. 47 Binh and Lépinay, ‘Paris’, pp. 519-522. 48 ‘Ou bien on le reconstruisait en studio, selon les clichés du pittoresque ou du "réalisme". Ou bien, pour les documentaristes, le vrai Paris devenait prétexte à des considérations poétiques qui le déréalisait’ (Jean Douchet, Le Paris de la Nouvelle vague, www.forumdesimages.fr), accessed on : 13 September 2009.
24 expressing French nationalism and relying on stars and fixed screenplays) dominated the French production in the 50s.49 The liberation from the constraints of studios that the Italian cinema had encountered already in 1945 did not occur in France until the end of the 50s, with the New Wave movement. According to Binh and Lépinay, the image of the city was liberated after that and, it consequently, became polymorphic.50 Those changes were correlated with changes in social, urban and cinematic history, which will be examined in our next chapter.
49 Alan Williams, Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking, (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 278-283. 50 Bich and Lépinay, ‘Paris’, p. 522.
25 CHAPTER 2
PARIS AND GODARD IN THE 1960s
Tous mes films ont constitué des rapports sur la situation du pays, des documents d'actualité, traités d'une façon particulière peut-être, mais en fonction de l'actualité moderne.
Jean-Luc Godard
(Interview, quoted in Godard par Godard, 1985)
Godard est le premier cinéaste qui bâtit ses films en journaliste.
Susan Sontag (quoted in Esquenazi, 2004)
As the above quotations above demonstrate, Jean-Luc Godard was often inspired by the French social and cultural milieu of the late 1950s and 1960s. All of his early films have a high documentary value since they portray the French society of the period. Moreover, Paris and its transformations held an important role in these films. The aim of this chapter is to give a historical, as well as a cinematic background of France in 1960s. An overview of the most important social and historical events that influenced Godard’s work will be given in the first part of the chapter. In the second part, attention will be paid to Paris and the way it changed during this period. The third part will focus on the New Wave and on Godard’s role in the movement. The films he made after the movement will be examined in the last part of the chapter with a special focus on Godard’s ‘epistemological shift’1 of the mid-60s.
1 Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s (New York; London: Continuum, 2008). pp. 193-194.
1. CHANGES OF THE POST-WAR PERIOD
In the late 1950s and 1960s, France underwent many historical, social, and cultural transformations. This period was marked by Charles de Gaulle’s return to power and the formation of the Fifth Republic (in 1958). De Gaulle’s politics contributed to the country’s fast economic development and protected its reputation as a world power. The controversial war which the French led in Algeria ended in 1962, to the general satisfaction of the public. Nevertheless, the country had already entered a period of prosperity after the Second World War. As Bousquet and Pessin explain, these thirty years (les trente glorieuses, to use the term of the economist Jean Fourastié) that lasted until the mid-70s, ‘brought the most dramatic socio-economic, cultural and geopolitical change France had experienced since the Revolution.’2 The country prospered mostly due to large investments in new technologies and its open economy policy. A rise in employment in the tertiary sector led to urbanisation and a fast development of the cities. Moreover, the country’s population rose by 12 million over a period of thirty years, as a consequence of the post-war natural boom and significant migrations of workers from the former colonies during the 50s and 60s.3 These factors encouraged a higher productivity and stimulated economic development, but they also profoundly changed the French society. The progress, new technologies and openness to the influences from the United States blurred the boundaries between social classes and influenced a growth of the middle-class population. Furthermore, a higher purchasing power resulted in the making of a consumer society. Lifestyle changes were profound: things that were considered luxuries in the previous decades (such as washing machines, refrigerators, radios and television sets) in the 60s became readily available to many middle-class families. Cars, although not many people could afford them, became ‘l'objet d'un veritable culte’.4 The American influence, which had a tremendous role in those changes, was mostly expanded through radio and television.
2 Gilles Bousquet, Alain Pessin, ‘Culture and Identity in Post-war France’ in: Nicolas Hewitt (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture (Cambridge University Press 2003), p. 46. Information in this part of the chapter was taken from this article, unless stated otherwise. 3 The population rose from 40 to 52 million between 1946 and 1975, which was equal to the growth in the period from 1800-1946. Ibid., P. 43. 4 Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire d'une ville (XIXe-XXe siècle), (Paris: Seuil, 1993), p. 309.
27 Furthermore, in 1946, the French cinema halls opened to Hollywood films (which were forbidden during the Occupation), which greatly influenced future directors.5 Finally, the appearance of jazz in the 50s and rock and roll in the 60s had a big impact on popular culture. Many writers and intellectuals criticised mass culture and consumer society for inverting values and making life a ‘consumable good’.6 Henri Lefebvre and Georges Hourdin claimed that consumerism produced the citoyen-robot since people became slaves of advertising that programmed their everyday life. In their automatic lives people lived unconsciously, following imposed rules.7 Moreover, according to Esquenazi, the question of American influence was tightly linked to the cultural dispute of the French intellectuals. Americanism was equated with popular culture and mass entertainment and attacked by both left and right political wings.8 This guerre culturelle between the classical and the popular/industrial culture particularly revolved around cinema. French intellectuals considered that Hollywood films lacked artistic values and that they were made for the masses. Furthermore, as Esquenazi points out, they considered cinema an industry intended for distraction, rather than an art form capable of producing classical works.9 Consumerism as a way of life was mostly accepted by young people. As Bousquet and Pessin explain, young people were free from the constraints of history and open to foreign influences. Their non-conformist attitude to life and rejection of traditional values paved the way to embracing new technologies and fashions, such as television, music, films or magazines and, consequently, they constituted a significant part of the popular culture.10 Moreover, due to the post-war baby boom, young people formed a large part of the French society. Nevertheless, in the late 50s and 60s they were not in a favourable position. Since there were so many of them, they were facing employment difficulties and stiff competition in applying for universities. As Antoine de Baecque explains, they were dissatisfied with their role in the society, as well as with the country’s politics, in particular with the war in Algeria,
5 Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Godard et la société française des années 1960 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004), pp. 38-39. In particular, the New Wave directors were inspired by Hollywood. 6 For example, Georges Perec, Jean Baudrillard or Edgar Morin (Bousquet, Pessin, ‘Culture and Identity in Post- war France’, p. 48). 7 Henri Lefebvre, La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne (1968) and Georges Hourdin, Les Chrétiens contre la société de consommation (1969), quoted in: Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, pp. 252-253. 8 Americanism presented the spread of capitalism to the Left and a threat to the ‘valeurs éternelles de la civilisation’ to the Right (Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p. 33). 9 ‘Le cinéma est fondamentalement industriel et il ne peut pas produire des oeuvres classiques’ (Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Quand Hollywood veut faire penser...', L'Ecran français, No. 5 (August 1945), quoted in: Esquenazi, Godard et la société française pp. 35-37). 10 Bousquet et Pessin, ‘Culture and Identity in Post-war France’, pp. 46-47.
28 against which many of them had been mobilised since the mid-50s.11 This generation, described by sociologists as ‘venant après la bataille, “après l'histoire”, mais contemporaine de la bombe atomique, de la “destruction possible et immédiate du monde”’,12 experienced melancholy and boredom. According to Baecque, monotony, feelings of solitude and abandonment provoked the mal des jeunes, which manifested in their lack of interest in politics and a passive resistance to the government. Consequently, the government recognised the situation as ‘alarmante’ and the youth as one of the biggest problems the French society was facing.13 The workers and students were dissatisfied with the working conditions and traditional teaching methods at universities, as well as with the government censorship and control over the media.14 According to some surveys, a feeling of powerlessness regarding political decisions, alienation and pessimism prevailed among the French in the 60s.15 These instances, as well as dissatisfaction with the global situation (particularly with the Vietnam War) provoked a massive uprising in May 1968. Although the students’ demands were not satisfied, this event weakened de Gaulle’s power and he finally resigned in 1969.16 Hence, the 60s, although marked by great prosperity and profound social transformation, were also a period of serious political turbulence. These changes and turbulences were mirrored in architecture and urban planning, in particular those of the capital.
2. PARIS: CHANGES IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING
According to Marchand,17 de Gaulle led three distinct and somewhat contradictory urban policies. The first one focused on regional development to the detriment of that of the capital. Numerous limitations on construction in Paris were imposed with the aim of
11 Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p. 47. 12 The conclusions of sociologists Alfred Sauvy and Edgar Morin, quoted in : Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p. 52. 13 Baecque, La nouvelle vague, pp. 45-56. 14 As Sergeant points out, the state had the monopoly over radio and television: the RTF (Radiodiffusion television française), was first controlled and after 1964 supervised by the Ministry of information. For that reason, some demonstrations of 1968 were held in front of the Maison de la Radio, on the right bank of the Seine. (Jean-Claude Sergeant, ‘The mass media’, in :Nicolas Hewitt (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture (Cambridge University Press 2003), pp. 82-83). 15 Melvin Seeman, ‘The Signals of ‘68: Alienation in Pre-Crisis France, in: American Sociological Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (August 1972), pp. 387-389. 16 Lerner, Meacham, McNall Burns, Western civilizations, pp. 1056-1062. 17 Information on urbanism is taken from: Marchand, Paris, histoire d'une ville, pp. 279-320, unless stated otherwise.
29 diminishing the city growth and its rapidly growing population. Hence, de Gaulle continued the politics from the 1940s and the 1950s that neglected the city and its necessary development and which resulted in many problems, such as in dilapidated houses spread all over the city and bidonvilles on the periphery. The need for a deep transformation of the city proved urgent. Hence, de Gaulle’s second policy encouraged a rapid development of the city. In the 60s, new neighbourhoods were built on the periphery, such as La Défense, a new financial district.18 The housing problem was tackled in two ways: by reconstructing and renovating the city centre and its close periphery and by constructing new neighbourhoods in the suburban zone (the grands ensembles), which were supposed to replace the unhealthy bidonvilles. Consequently, the centre and the periphery (the arrondissements) underwent numerous changes and renewals. Priority was given to the removal of the îlots insalubres, neighbourhoods that were particularly dilapidated and unhealthy. Most frequently they were replaced with modernist apartment buildings and skyscrapers that provided better living conditions. Spacious apartments with bathrooms presented a large improvement for the inhabitants who had lived, only several years beforehand, in overpopulated buildings, sharing toilets among households and using public baths.19 However, life was more expensive in the new apartments and, as Evenson shows, an important number of old inhabitants preferred moving to the cheaper suburbs rather than stay in their neighbourhoods. The customs and habits of those who had stayed profoundly changed. The streets and bistros, places for socialising in the past, were slowly being replaced by television, indoor activities and weekends in the province.20 In many neighbourhoods the higher costs of life caused migrations of the working class to the suburbs and brought about changes in the social structure of the city centre. Finally, the high-rise buildings and skyscrapers profoundly changed the Paris cityscape. The renovations in the city centre could not solve the housing problem. The rapidly growing number of inhabitants forced the government to find other solutions – they had to build cheaply and quickly. Functionalism and the principles of the Athens Charter (1933), according to which urban planning should regulate city growth and establish control through
18 Norma Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978 (New Haven; London : Yale University Press, 1979), p. 193. 19 As Marchand points out, in 1954, France was ‘la championne, en Europe, du surpeuplement (concernant un quart de logements) et de l'inconfort (un cinquième des logements n'avaient pas l'eau courante; les deux tiers manquaient de cabinet de toilette; les trois quarts, de salle d'eau)’. (Marchand, Paris, histoire d'une ville, p. 283). 20 Compare the study of the changes in the 13th arrondissement by Henri Coing, Rénovation urbaine et changement social (Paris: Editions Ouvrières, 1966), resumed in: Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, pp. 255-244.
30 rational order had a big impact on the planning of new neighbourhoods.21 The housing project unofficially called the grands ensembles, which was supported by the government, emerged in mid-50s. This model of constructing new neighbourhoods in the suburbs, where the land was cheaper, remained dominant in the Paris region until the 70s. According to Evenson, the grands ensembles contained between 8,000 and 10,000 dwelling units and combined towers with big horizontal blocks of five or six-storeys. They were intended for a population of 30,000 to 40,000, mostly for workers and immigrants, but soon attracted the middle class, especially young people: by 1969 every sixth inhabitant in the Paris region lived in the grands ensembles.22 They had many advantages: a large number of apartments were constructed at a lower cost in a short period of time. They partly liberated the overpopulated city centre and solved the problems of the unhygienic slums. Finally, they offered cheap and comfortable housing, as well as better conditions of life for their dwellers. However, they soon became a source of controversy, since they lacked public facilities and their architecture was usually monotonous. The streets, normally used as places for socialising, were replaced by shops, car parks and wide avenues that did not have the same function. The distance from the city centre and dependence on means of transportation (which highly encouraged the use of cars)23 reinforced the feeling of isolation. In 1973, Olivier Guichard, Minister of Public Works, criticised the project for neglecting the basic needs of its inhabitants and provoking psychological and social problems:
Les grands ensembles (…) rompent l'harmonie du paysage urbain; ils s'intègrent mal ou ne s'intègrent pas à la vie de la ville; ils donnent à leur habitants l'impression à la fois de l'isolement et de l'entassement dans un monde complètement artificiel (…); ils favorisent la ségrégation sociale (…); ils tendent dans de très nombreux quartiers de nos villes à transformer le citoyen en simple résident. 24
Likewise, Henri Lefebvre labelled this type of urbanisation ‘la nouvelle barbarie’.25
21 The Athens Charter is a document made during the fourth congress of the CIAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne), held in 1933, with theme 'The Functional City'. It proposed a rational division of cities into functional zones (leisure, dwelling, transportation and work) and construction of big housing blocks which would be separated one from another by vast green fields. 22 Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, pp. 239-240. 23 Sutcliffe underlines the politics of Delouvrier and the Prime Minister Pompidou that wanted France to adapt fast to the motor car. Anthony Sutcliffe, ‘Architecture, planning and design’, in: Nicolas Hewitt (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture, p. 76. 24 ‘Circulaire de Guichard’ (1973), quoted in: Florence Tourette, Développement social urbain et politique de la ville, (Paris: Gualino, 2005), p. 90. 25 Lefebvre, La production de l'espace, p. XIX.
31 The quality of life in the grands ensembles appeared to be bad, since violence and crime were at a high level. Furthermore, according to Marchand, one of the phenomena of life in the grands ensembles was occasional prostitution, ‘le fait des petites-bourgeoises qui cherchaient autant de se distraire qu'à se procurer de l’argent’.26 The stories published in some magazines and journals confirmed such phenomenon: as the costs of living in the new apartments were too high for their monthly budget, women were often forced to find another source of income. One of such articles, Catherine Vimenet’s ‘Les étoiles filantes’, directly inspired Godard for his film Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle.27 Journalists were particularly hostile to the grands ensembles and they even accused them of provoking a psychological disease, which they named the sarcellite, after les Sarcelles, the largest complex in the Paris region.28 The grands ensembles were finally prohibited in 1973.29 Finally, the third policy of de Gaulle’s government focused on spreading the Parisian influence on its wider region. The district of Paris (la région parisienne) was formed in 1961 and its prefect Paul Delouvrier was from then in charge of 1,305 councils (communes). The works focused primarily on creating new towns in the Paris region that would be independent from the capital30 and on improving the transportation system. Along with the prolonged metro lines and the construction of the RER, the construction of the Boulevard Périphérique (finished in 1973) made city transportation easier. These social, historical and urban transformations were also reflected in the cinema of the period. Paris was a setting of most New Wave films and was an important theme of Godard’s early films. Moreover, the directors’ wish to depict reality through a documentary approach resulted in the films that both portrayed and influenced the changes in French society in the 60s.
26 Marchand, Paris: histoire d'une ville, p. 285. 27 Catherine Vimenet, 'Les étoiles filantes', in : Le Nouvel Observateur (23 March 1966), reproduced in: Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 329. 28 ‘Sarcellite, total disenchantment, indifference to social life, insurmountable boredom, ending in nervous depression in benign cases, and suicide in acute cases’ (Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, p. 247). 29 However, many surveys show that the inhabitants were generally satisfied with their life in the new neighbourhoods, which was certainly due to the aforementioned improved facilities (such as bathrooms or spacious apartments). For example, a survey from 1967 shows that 88% of the inhabitants considered their apartments acceptable or better. (Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, pp. 240-241). 30 Evry, Cergy, Saint-Quentin, Marne-la-Vallée and Melun-Sénart were begun between 1966-69. (Marchand, Paris, histoire d'une ville, p. 312).
32 3. CHANGES IN CINEMA: THE NEW WAVE PHENOMENON
In this social and cultural milieu was born the New Wave, a movement in cinema that lasted from 1958 to 196231 and that shook the French film industry, as well as the French society and its traditional values. Hence, in his article on Truffaut, Godard criticised the cinema de qualité by writing:
Nous ne pouvons pas vous pardonner de n'avoir jamais filmé des filles comme nous les aimons, des garçons comme nous les croisons tous les jours, des parents comme nous les méprisons ou les admirons, des enfants comme ils nous étonnent ou nous laissent indifférents, bref, les choses telles qu'elles sont.32
As Esquenazi highlights, in this quotation, nous has a double meaning: on the one hand it is nous, the group of directors and, on the other hand, nous, the group of the young generation.33 These directors had identical aims: firstly, to establish themselves as artists and the film as a form of art by fighting against the conventions of the French film industry and changing the process of filmmaking and, secondly, to depict reality through a documentary approach, with a view to show ‘les choses telles qu’elle sont’ and, consequently, to impose a new aesthetics.
Technical innovations and cinemaphilia
As Allan Williams explains, the French film industry of the post-war period was ‘virtually a closed shop.’34 In order to become a director, for example, one had to work for many years as a director’s assistant. Consequently, the young directors with no experience depended on alternative financial sources. Hence, in order to make a lower budget film, they had to film quickly and limit their cast and crew to a smaller number of people, mostly unknown actors or friends. They often assisted one another: for example, Godard’s A bout de
31 Michel Marie sets the end of the movement in 1963 and according to the media in 1960 (Marie, La nouvelle vague, pp. 13-17), whereas Baecque puts it at the beginning of 1962 (Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p. 146). Esquenazi places the movement between 1958 and 1961-62, emphasising, however, that it should be expanded to the period of short films and the directors’ struggle to establish themselves as authors (since 1954). Moreover, he argues that the movement had its ‘pre-history’, between 1949 and 1954, which was marked by the directors’ inspiration with the American cinema. (Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p.128). 32 J.-L. Godard, ‘Truffaut représentera la France à Cannes avec Les Quatre cent coups’, Arts, No. 719 (22 April 1959), in: Baecque, La nouvelle vague: portrait d’une jeunesse, p. 40. 33 Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, pp. 70-71. 34 Williams, Republic of Images, p. 292.
33 souffle was supervised by Chabrol, the screenplay was originally Truffaut’s (who also found the producer) and Melville was given a role in the film. Furthermore, the shooting on location (on the streets and in real apartments) replaced the shooting in expensive studios. This was mostly due to the use of hand-held camera and of post-synchronisation. Godard was one of the movement’s greatest technical innovators: he was the first to use the ultra-sensitive film stock Ilford HPS that enabled him to film during the night, using only city lights.35 A bout de souffle was, therefore, taken for the movement’s manifesto, due to its stylistic innovations, such as the use of night shots, a constantly moving camera, jump cuts or experimentation with sound. Moreover, these young directors criticised the craftsmanship of the quality directors who rarely experimented with themes and techniques, but used conventional formulas that pleased the audience and paid off the high production costs.36 In contrast, the New Wave directors considered cinema as an art form, a language that transposes thoughts, in Alexandre Astruc’s words, by a ‘caméra-stylo’.37 They emphasised the importance of the director: the auteur policy (politique des auteurs) rejected the role of scriptwriters and imposed the director as the only author of the film. Although this policy was contradictory, since the movement also emphasised collective work, it was primarily aimed against conventional approaches to filmmaking and recognising the directors’ artistic expression. Hence, the young directors were firstly great cinéphiles who attended screenings and debates in cinema clubs and admired auteurs of Italian Neo-realism, American Film Noir or French cinema of the 30s. Furthermore, many of them, such as Rivette, Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer, had started their careers as cinema critics, primarily within the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, where they defended their colleagues’ films and praised American cinema, in particular, low budget films of B-production. The latter were a symbol of popular culture and amateur cinema, to which they paid homage by using all the registers or mixing genres in their films.38 Tributes to cinematic history, as well as to the New Wave movement can be seen in many films: for example, Rivette’s characters watch Metropolis in Paris nous appartient, Antoine watches and discusses Rivette’s film and steals the picture of
35 Before A bout de souffle, Ilford HPS was only used in photography. Since the stocks were not long enough, Godard had to slice them together in order to obtain a longer stock that he could use for filming. 36 According to Truffaut, this was particularly the case with directors such as Claude Autant-Lara, Jean Delannoy, René Clément etc. (Marie, La nouvelle vague, p. 35). 37 As Marie points out, the young Turks were inspired with the Alexandre Astruc's manifesto: ‘Naissance d'une nouvelle avant-garde: la caméra-stylo’, published in L'Ecran Français in 1948: Astruc argued that the cinema was a language, a new means of expression, similar to an essay or a novel. (Marie, La nouvelle vague, p. 29). 38 Esquenazi emphasises the relation to the popular culture as one of the most significant characteristics of the movement. (Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, pp. 12-14).
34 Bergman’s Monika in Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959) 39 and Rohmer includes intertitles, a heritage of the silent cinema, in Place de l’Etoile (in: Paris vu par…, 1965). References to film history are, however, most frequent in Godard’s films and will be examined more thoroughly in our analysis.
Documentary approach
Before becoming a synonym for a movement in cinema, the term ‘New Wave’ was initially used to describe a social movement.40 Significantly, the social reality was at the centre of inspiration of the cinematic movement: according to Baecque, 'elle (the New Wave) fut le premier mouvement de cinéma à avoir ainsi stylisé, au présent, dans l'immediateté de son histoire, le monde dans lequel vivaient ses contemporains'.41 The young directors were tired of artificial portraits of the youth made by their predecessors (such as in Carné’s Les Tricheurs, 1958) and wanted to depict the world as it was: real people, acting realistically and confronting problems of the period. Consequently, as Williams puts it, the New Wave recreated the ‘small rituals of everyday living: lighting cigarettes, shopping, conversing in cafes, walking in the streets’.42 The themes were mostly personal, as the directors portrayed the world that they knew well, such as the youth: in Chabrol’s Les Cousins (1959), Godard’s A bout de souffle or Truffaut’s Antoine et Colette (1962). Also, they were sometimes autobiographical, such as Les Cousins or Les 400 coups. The themes were contemporary and dealt with problems that were troubling the real youth: unfulfilled love (Antoine et Colette), sexual freedom (Godard’s Une femme est une femme, 1961), melancholy and lack of money (Rouch’s Gare du Nord, in: Paris vu par…, 1965) or misunderstandings between generations (Les 400 coups). Moreover, the products of popular culture, such as films, magazines, music, cars and fashion can be seen in many New Wave films. The characters were convincing, they spoke with accents, used slang and wore modern clothes. The young and unknown actors that embodied them were more spontaneous
39 Monika is the main character in Ingmar Bergman’s film Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika, 1953). 40 The term initially appeared in the title of the journal l'Express in 1957: La nouvelle vague arrive!. The articles dealt with sociological surveys on the French youth, which were led by Françoise Giroud. The critic Pierre Billard was the first one to use the term 'New Wave' in reference to the cinematic movement (in the magazine Cinéma 58 in February 1958). (Baecque, La nouvelle vague, pp. 57-69). 41 Baecque, La nouvelle vague, pp. 15-16. 42 Williams, Republic of Images, p. 338.
35 in front of the camera and the directors allowed them to improvise in order to be more authentic.43 The young New Wave directors, inspired by the unmotivated camera of Italian Neo- realists, often made digressions in order to show excerpts of ‘real life’ or include documentary shots in their fictional films: for example, in Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), the camera follows Cléo throughout the film (in a real time), but stops on several occasions to film ‘quelques autres’, such as a couple breaking up or a group of students discussing art. Likewise, in Les 400 coups, Truffaut films a puppet show and expressions on the faces of the children’s audience, without previously motivating the sequence (the spectator is not given an explanation why Antoine and René go there). Hence, an interrupted plot and Deleuzian optical and sound situations give these films a realistic and documentary characteristic, like in de Sica’s or Rossellini’s films. Another important theme of the New Wave movement was Paris, since most of the films were shot there. Shooting on location enabled the directors not only to film the city’s architecture and monuments, but also to film its people (mostly passers-by or, in Cléo de 5 à 7, merchants and street entertainers). Moreover, the city held an important role in these films: special attention was paid to its monuments (for example, in travelling shots of the Eiffel tower in the opening sequence of Les 400 coups) and the camera followed the characters in their wanderings in the city (in Cléo de 5 a 7). An homage to the city was, however, most explicitly paid in a somewhat late sketch-film Paris vu par… (1965), made of six short films (by six directors), each of them dedicated to one Parisian quartier.44
Reception and the end of the movement
The New Wave was very popular at the time, especially after the spring of 1959, when Les 400 coups won the best directing award at the Cannes film festival.45 This was followed
43 The role model for the young directors was Brigitte Bardot’s performance in Vadim’s Et dieu créa la femme (1956): ‘son absence de jeu, sa spontanéité, sa façon de parler, de marcher, de sourire, de laver le sol pieds nus et (…) d’embrasser (…) ses partenaires masculins’. (Marie, La nouvelle vague, p. 94). 44 Godard (Montparnasse-Levallois), Rouch (Gare du Nord), Rohmer (Place de l'Etoile), Jean Douchet (Saint- Germain des Près), Jean-Daniel Pollet (Rue Saint-Denis) and Chabrol (La Muette - XVIe). 45 ‘At the Cannes stock-market last spring (1959), the French producer who did not have his young Frenchman to sell was simply wasting his time; foreign distributors were interested in almost no other commodity, and they paid some pretty fancy prices.’ Noël Burch, ‘Qu’est-ce que la nouvelle vague…’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter 1959), pp. 16-30, reproduced in: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/rivette/OK/burch-nouvellevague.html, accessed on: 30 September 2009.
36 by A bout de souffle’s outstanding box-office success the following year.46 The critics were divided: they praised the movement’s innovations and spontaneity, but on the other hand, they criticised it for having ‘nothing to say’, for being immoral and indifferent to political problems.47 The commercial failures that followed in 1960, as well as some internal problems deepened the problems within the group.48 Moreover, the fact that a large number of often untalented directors identified themselves with the movement made the others turn to individual projects in order to express themselves as real authors. The auteur policy was, therefore, replaced by individualism and a wish to dissociate oneself from the group. The movement finally fell apart in 1962. The New Wave had a great impact on both French and foreign cinema and represented popular culture in the cultural debates of the period.49 After 1962, Chabrol, Truffaut and others continued to make films but, according to Baecque, Godard was the only one to continue to film in the movement’s spirit.50 However, this is only partially correct, since his attitudes and styles changed throughout the decade, in some aspects even radically.
4. THE CHANGING ASPECTS OF GODARD’S CAREER
Godard left a profound mark on the New Wave movement, both as a director and a film critic and is consequently considered emblematic of the movement. His first films, such as A bout de souffle, Le petit soldat (1960) and Une femme est une femme reflected the aesthetics of the movement: they were innovative in style and technique, depicted young people, expressed fascination with the symbols of popular culture (such as cars, music, magazines, films or posters) and praised American cinema and New Wave films, as well as cinema in general.
46 They attracted around 450,000 spectators each. (Marie, La nouvelle vague, p. 16). 47 ‘(Ils) n'ont rien en commun que leur goût du scandale, leur milieu aisé et bourgeois et leur incapacité morale’. (Jacques Siclier, Nouvelle vague? (1961), quoted in: Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p. 124). Also, de Baecque points out that the right wing criticised the movement's libertinage, and the left its 'uselessness' and the political disinterest in the Algerian war. (Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p. 138). 48 For example, Godard's Une femme est une femme, Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) or Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) were big commercial failures. Moreover, Godard's Le petit soldat (1960) was banned by the government. Additionally, de Baecque highlighted the dispute between Vadim and Truffaut as one of the main reasons for the disintegration of the group. (Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p.146) 49 Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p.12. However, the movement's cultural impact can be seen best in the fact that by the end of the 50s the cinema gained its artistic recognition and entered the domain of the Ministry of Culture. (Marie, La nouvelle vague, p. 24). 50 Chabrol turned to commercial projects and Truffaut made some films that could be defined as 'classical'. (Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p. 143).
37 However, the films he made after 1962 changed in themes and aesthetics. In this second phase, Godard became interested in more ‘serious’ themes (prostitution in Vivre sa vie, complex relationship in a couple in Le Mépris, 1963) and he changed some methods of filmmaking (Le Mépris, for example, was a high-budget film with the star Brigitte Bardot). The camera that was constantly moving and following the characters in the New Wave films, became objective and independent, which emphasised the director’s presence in the film. However, as Esquenazi points out, the New Wave nostalgia can be seen in both Bande à part (1964) and Alphaville that were made several years after the end of the movement. According to Esquenazi, this phase was also marked by a change in Godard’s concept of the auteur policy: whereas in the New Wave period, he presented himself as an auteur within a group, after 1962, he wanted to become acknowledged as an individual auteur. Finally, in 1965, Pierrot le fou brought him the general appreciation of the critics and made him an important part of the classical culture.51 In 1966 Godard turned to more radical themes and became un artiste engagé.52 The musical comedies and personal stories of the previous phases were replaced with political films and films exploring forms and their significance (in La Chinoise (1967), Made in U.S.A. (1966) and Deux ou trois choses). Moreover, the narrative became fragmented and even deconstructed. Finally, the fascination with American films and popular culture was replaced with their complete rejection. Hence, in Masculin, Féminin (1966), Godard ironically stated: ‘Donnez-nous la télévision et une auto et délivrez-nous de la liberté’. The shift in Godard’s attitudes was mostly due to the social and historical changes of the period. The American imperialism, which became more obvious with the onset of the Vietnam War, de Gaulle’s authoritarian rule and the disadvantages of the consumer society were criticised by many intellectuals.53 Likewise, in this period Godard identified himself with the political left wing and Maoism and he started using cinema primarily as a means of expressing social and political criticism. His criticisms of urban planning (in Deux ou trois choses…) and consumer society (in Week-end, 1967), as well as depictions of the revolutionary youth (in Masculin, Féminin and La Chinoise) greatly reflected the problems in France in the mid-60s and anticipated the May 68 events. Whereas in his early films Godard responded to the cultural war by praising American cinema and popular culture, in his later films and especially after 1966, Godard became one of
51 Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, pp. 267-269. 52 Ibid., p. 267. 53 For example, Sartre claimed that the dialogue with the USA had become impossible. (Ibid., p. 209).
38 their most extreme opponents. His contempt for popular culture became even more radical after 1968, when he completely abandoned traditional distribution for a certain period of time. He turned to making militant films, intended for a restricted audience of people who shared his political ideas and the cinéphiles. The changes in Godard’s career were linked to the historical and cultural milieu to which he always responded in a critical and subversive way. Moreover, experimentation with forms and techniques and Godard’s interest in the purpose of cinema and the difference between reality and fiction greatly influenced the diversity of his early films. The following chapters will examine how this diversity was reflected in Godard’s depictions of Paris.
39 CHAPTER 3:
THE (UN)ATTRACTIVE CITY CENTRE: PARIS IN A BOUT DE SOUFFLE AND VIVRE SA VIE
MICHEL : Regarde, c’est beau la Concorde ! PATRICIA : Oui, c’est mystérieux, avec toutes les lumières.
A bout de souffle
The city plays an important role in A bout de souffle and in Vivre sa vie. These films, made at the beginning and at the end of the New Wave period, both embody some of the movement's characteristics, such as fascination with the city centre, filming on location or intertextuality and documentary approach. They are also strongly marked by Godard's authorship, especially in terms of stylistic innovations. However, their cinematic cities differ in subjects, characters and atmosphere, which is due to changes in Godard's attitudes towards the auteur policy and the French society, as well as changes brought by the end of the movement in 1962. These similarities and differences will be explored from different perspectives: through an analysis of the role played by the city in the narrative, the study of different places in the city, its ties with the characters and its two aspects: the documentary and the invented. Finally, a commentary with concluding remarks will be given on Godard's Paris as Lefebvre's lived space.
1. FASCINATION WITH THE DECOR: THE CITY’S IMPORTANCE IN THE NARRATIVE
The importance of the city is already reflected in the screenplays of these films, where the setting is precisely defined (for example, there are more than twenty sites listed in A bout de souffle screenplay).1 This proves that Godard filmed the places he knew well and reveals his interest in the decor, from which he usually started when making a film. In both films, special attention is paid to the city and in particular, to its monuments. In A bout de souffle, the shots of the city serve as establishing shots, which is a heritage of the classical tradition: the sequence when Poiccard comes to Paris begins with a tracking shot of Notre-Dame and the Seine, filmed from a car. In the same way, the sequence where Patricia looks at her belly in the shop window and goes home starts with a tracking shot of the Eiffel Tower.2 However, shots of the city are often ‘inserted’ in the narrative in a manner that breaks with the classical tradition. Hence, in the sequence when the detectives pursue Michel on the Champs-Elysées, the camera stops following the characters in order to film the Arc de Triomphe: it shows Michel and detectives entering the metro, then zooms out to make a ninety degree pan over the street and film the monument in a still shot, as if it was waiting for Poiccard to pass the underground. Finally, the pan shot continues in the same direction and zooms the other part of the Avenue and Michel leaving the metro. Although the sequence is motivated by action, by focusing on the decor instead of action, Godard is demonstrating his innovative style and his fascination with Parisian monuments. Such fascination can also be seen in the two aerial shots of the Louvre with the Tuileries gardens and Notre-Dame, not
1 Such as ‘le boulevard Saint-Germain, la cour d’un immeuble à côté du Flore, petite rue devant le Biarritz, le métro Georges V (quai Neuilly, quai Vincennes), devant la Pergola en haut des Champs-Elysées’. The screenplay for Vivre sa vie reveals a similar concern for the decor: ‘Dans les Champs-Elysées, dans un Prisunic quelconque, quelque part sur les boulevards, dans la rue Washington, du côté de Réamur-Sebastopol, Notre- Dame’ (Screenplays, reproduced in: Bergala, Godard au travail, pp. 23-25, 105-106). 2 This shot reminds of Truffaut's tracking shots of the Eiffel Tower in Les 400 coups.
41 motivated by action, which makes them, in Deleuze’s terms, purely optical and sign situations. 3 Similar examples can be found in Vivre sa vie: the second ‘tableau’ starts with two establishing shots of the Arc de Triomphe and the record store where Nana works. They are followed by a sequence shot of more than three minutes of the interior of the store: the camera follows Nana while serving a customer and asking her colleagues to lend her some money. By the end of the shot, while a salesgirl is reading Nana a story, the camera crosses the store in a pan shot and stops in front of the shop window, filming the exterior (the street with its passers-by and cars). The importance of the decor in the film is accentuated by other unmotivated sequences, such as the tracking shots of the street with the cinema hall showing Truffaut’s Jules et Jim and of the Arc du Caroussel (both in the last ‘tableau’), filmed from a car. The parts of the city are also mentioned in the intertitles and are a subject of certain dialogues. In Vivre sa vie, intertitles anticipate the decor of the following ‘tableaux’, such as Les Champs-Elysées, Place du Châtelet or un café de banlieue. In A bout de souffle, the characters admire the beauty of La Concorde, notice the ‘ugliness’ of modernist buildings or simply highlight the setting.4 Moreover, a spectator is always given a topographic orientation, since the characters clearly state where they are going.5 By these means, Godard clearly emphasises that the action is taking place in a particular city (Paris) and that it could not happen in any other surroundings. The city is therefore an accentuated setting and a vital part of the narrative; however, it still does not significantly shape it, in contrast to the other two films of our analysis.
3 They mark a transition between the long interior sequence in Patricia's room (the final close-up of Michel and Patricia kissing) and a sequence that starts with a medium shot of the characters sitting in a café. 4 Hence, in the scene where we are presented to Patricia, Michel asks her: 'Tu montes ou tu descends les Champs?' PATRICIA: 'Qu'est-ce que c'est les Champs?' MICHEL: 'Les Champs-Elysées.' 5 Similar means are used in de Sica's Bicycle thieves, giving exact names of the sites. On the contrary, in Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, the sites are not determined and the city could be any American city.
42 2. CHOICE OF PLACES: PARISIAN LANDMARKS AND ANONYMOUS PLACES
The city centre and its landmarks
These two films mostly show the city centre. As we have seen, the city’s landmarks (or the Parisian clichés, such as Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe or Place de la Concorde) are often present in A bout de souffle (and somewhat less in Vivre sa vie), which creates an image of an attractive and historical city. However, major part of the action takes place on the Paris streets and boulevards. The Champs-Elysées here stand as a leitmotiv of both films and a source of inspiration for the director. In A bout de souffle, the ‘Champs’ are a place of movement, noise, lights, adventure and love: cars, street noise and people walking and working can be seen in the scenes of Michel’s and Patricia’s promenades on the Avenue. Their dialogues announce the adventurous film and their love story. The moving and shaky hand-held camera that follows the characters accentuates the city’s movement. Moreover, in the sequence where Michel follows Patricia, Godard films the Avenue at sunset, as the city lights turn on: cars, cinema halls, billboards, lights, as well as Martial Solal’s jazz musical theme emphasise the shiny, popular and adventurous city in movement. Finally, the ‘Champs’ are a place to go out at night: Godard films its restaurants and bars after dark and presents it as a fashionable place for rich young people, journalists, famous people and petty criminals who drive American cars. Neon lights, a dialogue on fashion, a stolen Cadillac and the jazz theme create the image of an entertaining and attractive city. The Paris boulevards and avenues are frequently filmed from a car (New Wave’s innovation) which, together with the use of the jump cuts, creates an effect of speed and movement and gives a fast pace rhythm to the city (as in the sequence where Michel drives Patricia to Montparnasse).6 The city is, however, given a sense of melancholy and pessimism, as in the shot where a car runs over a passer-by, in the scene near the Concorde that reveals Michel’s fears and disappointment7 and, finally, in the shot of Michel’s death on the street.
6 The atmosphere of Vertov's and Ruttmann's glorifying depictions of the city could be found, to a certain extent, in Godard's fast-paced edited image of the city that celebrates its people, movement and lights. 7 Michel pessimistically states: 'c'est normal: les dénonciateurs dénoncent, les cambrioleurs cambriolent, les assassins assassinent, les amoureux s'aiment'. Moreover, Bergala emphasises that Godard's initial idea was to film the story of a 'garçon qui pense à sa mort'. (Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 27).
43 Hence, the attractive, seductive and glamorous Paris is at the same time a city of crime and violence, where there is no future for the main character. The latter characteristics become more explicit in Vivre sa vie. In the seventh ‘tableau’, Nana is writing an ‘application letter’ for the job of a prostitute in front of a big photograph of the Champs-Elysées on the wall of a café. In the following shot Raoul enters the scene and sits across from Nana: the image of the Avenue dominates the frame, while the characters are shown in a medium close-up in its lower part. Raoul’s black suit and hair that completely cover Nana for a while create a contrast with the light background which, consequently, attracts the spectator’s attention. The dialogue in which Raoul is trying to convince Nana to stay in Paris and work for him reflects Nana’s sad destiny and subordination to her pimp. The sequence finishes with a long still shot of the ‘real’ Champs-Elysées at night: cars, billboards and city lights make it appear glamorous. However, Raoul’s sentence in a voice-over emphasises its other side: ‘C’est à l’heure où s’allument les lumières de la ville que commence la ronde sans espoir des filles de la rue.’ The contrast between these two characteristics gives the city a double meaning: under its attractiveness, Godard reveals a world of prostitution, crime and social problems. The still shot and the absence of music and atmosphere sound accentuate the ‘other’ Paris, which is a lot different from the entertaining and moving Paris of A bout de souffle, produced by jump cuts and the jazz musical theme.
The periphery
The outskirts and suburbs are almost completely absent from A bout de souffle (as in many New Wave films),8 whereas they play a more significant role in Vivre sa vie. Hence, the change in theme and genre (from a gangster film to a tragedy)9 is followed by a slow move from the centre towards the outskirts and the suburbs. In Vivre sa vie, the latter are primarily present as places of prostitution and crime: Nana meets her first customer at the ‘boulevards extérieurs’, (that is, on the boulevard Péreire), and she meets Raoul in a ‘café de banlieue’ (in Versailles).10 In the last shots of the sequence, the police shoot at a group of Algerians in front
8 The scene in the used car shop on the outskirts is an exception. 9 Nevertheless, Godard always uses a mixture of different genres in his films. 10 Topography of the places, if not mentioned in the film, is taken from the text of Roland-François Lack, Vivre sa vie: An Introduction and A to Z, http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/48/vivre-sa-vie-a-to-z.html, accessed on: 20 September 2009.
44 of the café and one of them, covered with blood, finds shelter in the café.11 A song on life in the suburbs, announcing Godard’s later more profound interest in its problems, preceeds the scene: ‘Ma môme (…), Ell’ travaille en usine/ A Créteil. / Dans une banlieue surpeuplée / On habite un meublé / Elle et moi / La fenêtre n'a qu'un carreau / Qui donne sur l'entrepôt / Et les toits…’12 Although the suburbs are already present in Vivre sa vie, they are not yet explored in a systematic and documentary manner, but appear as fragments.
Anonymous places
Although the films show Parisian monuments and other landmarks, anonymous places, such as little cafés and bistros, private rooms and apartments, cinema halls and no-name streets and passages are an important part of Godard’s Paris.13 Interior public places, such as bistros and cafés, are present in A bout de souffle. However, these scenes are quite short and not really important for the narrative. They are rather, in Williams’ words, ‘recreating small rituals of everyday living’ and are, to an extent, autobiographical.14 This is where characters play pinball, drink coffee (Patricia and Michel in a café near Notre-Dame) or talk about work (Patricia meets her boss in a restaurant in Montparnasse).15 In Vivre sa vie, however, cafés and bistros are a more important setting. This is where Nana’s destiny is determined, as she ends her relationship with Paul, declares her attitude on life and meets Raoul, decides to become a professional prostitute under Raoul’s protection or has a philosophical conversation on the meaning of words with Brice Parain. These scenes are a major part of the film and some of them play with the boundaries of the interior and the exterior and expand the cinematic space out of the camera frame.16 Hence, in the first ‘tableau’ the camera films the characters from the back (a rupture with the rules of traditional
11 This scene is edited imaginatively in a series of jump cuts responding to the rhythm of the shots from the machine gun. As Bergala explains, a continuous pan shot that Godard wanted instead was impossible to make: the camera moved too fast and produced a blurred image. In the editing process, Godard simply cut some frames in an innovative way, in order to make the pan shot faster. (Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 112-113). 12 The song is Ma môme, by Jean Ferrat (who appears in a cameo in the scene and puts the song on the jukebox). 13 Likewise, Bergala points out that ‘l’essentiel de l’urbanité, pour Godard, est ailleurs, dans quelques lieux communs, anonymes et génériques; les bistrots, les brasseries, les petits hôtels minables, les petites salles de cinéma de quartier, les rues ordinaires’. (Alain Bergala, ‘Jean-Luc Godard’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 712). 14 Godard obviously chose places that he knew well, since he named them already in the screenplay. He was probably one of the regular customers of these bistros and cafés. 15 Dramatic elements are present only in two short sequences, when Michel robs a customer in the bathroom of a café and when Patricia betrays Michel (she calls the detective from a café). 16 All these scenes are quite long. For example, the scene in the café where Nana meets Brice Parain lasts eleven minutes.
45 filmmaking) and their faces are seen only as reflections in the mirror, together with parts of buildings and a street. In the same way, the sequence with Brice Parain starts with a medium close-up of a part of the sitting booth and the mirror above it; in the latter a reflection of the café’s interior, a terrace and Nana climbing the stairs can be seen. By using these techniques, Godard explores space and the cinema’s possibility to extend it. By filming the shop windows, Godard produces a similar effect and blurs the boundaries between the interior and the exterior, as in the aforementioned shot in the record store. The city is, therefore, presented as an organic whole. Another recurrent interior space in these films is a room/an apartment, which usually stands for an intimate, private place.17 In A bout de souffle, an extremely long scene that lasts twenty-three minutes is set in Patricia’s room. This is where Patricia and Michel become intimate as they talk about their relationship and make love. The exterior can only be seen through a window and the street noise makes the conversation inaudible on two occasions. This sound experiment points out the space off screen (the street), but is used more as a gag, which does not have an important impact on the narrative.18 According to Bergala, the sequences made in the interior, in private places, are characteristic of Godard’s films. He describes them as ‘séquences insulaires, dans les lieux clos, où le couple se retrouve loin du bruit et de la fureur de l’histoire qui est le prétexte du scénario narratif’.19 Likewise, for Michel, the room is a hiding place where he can be emotional and vulnerable: while putting his head on Patricia’s belly, he can declare: ‘Je suis fatigué. Je vais mourir.’ Furthermore, J. S. Chauvin emphasises that private places make an essential feature of most New Wave films: ‘de la chambre à la rue, de la rue à la chambre: la Nouvelle vague aura fait de cet incessant mouvement une sorte de matrice esthétique, sous la double impulsion d'un intimisme de la jeunesse enfin révélé, (...) et d'un désir de sortir explorer les arcanes de la ville...20 The séquence insulaire showing Nana and her boyfriend in her apartment is much shorter. The medium close-ups of the characters alternate, while Godard reads Poe’s Oval portrait in a voice-over. Significantly, there are several shots of Nana in a medium close-up in
17 According to Jean-Paul Flamand, an apartment in the film is usually ‘un espace d’intimité, dans lequel on situe fréquemment des séquences de vie quotidienne (et) de relations interpersonnelles fortes’ (Jean-Paul Flamand, ‘Appartement’, in T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 226). 18 Godard will use the same gag in many films, including Vivre sa vie. He will mostly use this procedure in Made in U.S.A., where every time the surname of Richard P. is pronounced, another sound silences it (a telephone ringing, a noise of a plane or of a train, etc.). 19 Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 26, with my emphasis. 20 Jean- Sébastien Chauvin, ‘Nouvelle vague’, in T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 193. This play can be seen in many New Wave films, such as in Truffaut's Les 400 coups and Antoine et Colette or Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7.
46 front of the window, as if the boundaries between the exterior and the interior were nonexistent for her (as a prostitute, her destiny is determined by the outside world). Indeed, in the next sequence, Raoul takes her away in order to sell her. Other rooms portrayed in the film are hotel rooms used by prostitutes where there is no privacy: Nana freely enters the rooms of her colleagues (in the hotel scene). The windows with a view of the city play an important role in these sequences.21 Hence, Godard plays with the boundaries between private and public places. This can be seen as an expression of the aforementioned impulse, characteristic for the New Wave directors. In both films, private rooms are not only places for intimacy, but this is where the characters’ death is anticipated.22 This is certainly a product of Godard’s fiction, but could also be considered as expression of pessimism and melancholy that were troubling the youth of the decade. The still shots of the second séquence insulaire (in contrast to the moving sequence-shots made by a hand-held camera in the first), emphasise this pessimism even more. Godard saw cinema halls as both public and private places. Their presence in the two films has a symbolic meaning and pays homage to film heritage. In A bout de souffle, cinema halls are used as hiding places: Patricia hides from a police detective in a hall showing an American film. A few sequences later, both Patricia and Michel decide to wait until it gets dark in another cinema hall showing a western. Only the films’ sound is present, while the camera films Godard’s characters. A close-up of Patricia and Michel kissing suggests that cinema halls are also a place for love and intimacy. Nana, on the other hand, goes to see Carl Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). Here Godard introduces the entire sequences from Dreyer’s film. The dramatic close-ups of Jeanne crying are interrupted with two close-ups of Nana who, moved by Jeanne’s destiny, cries like the character ‘on screen’. Hence, Godard views cinema halls as a sort of a temple and a refuge from reality,23 or in Bruno’s words ‘a place for private, concentrated attention and yet loss – a place where attention turns inward and individual boundaries give way to
21 For example, in this sequence, Nana (in a close-up) is sitting by the window with the Seine in the background. 22 In Poe's Oval portrait an artist paints the portrait of his own wife and gets so involved that in the end his wife dies, since her soul has been transferred into the portrait. The use of this work has a metaphorical meaning (it announces Nana's death), but also an autobiographical (metatextual) significance, since Godard portrayed his wife Anna Karina (Nana) and it is him in the scene who reads the book in the voice-over. 'C'est notre histoire: un peintre qui fait le portrait de sa femme', says Godard/the character in the scene. 23 Likewise, Jean-Yves de Lépinay puts forward that ‘la salle de cinéma est un refuge, un îlot sombre et mystérieux vers lequel l’appellent les vives lumières des enseignes au néon, comme une invitation au voyage. (…) Les salles sont des temples’. (Lépinay, ‘Cinéphilie’, p. 61).
47 waves of perceptual unity’.24 A public place, therefore, becomes also a private place, where one can face or lose him/herself and experience vivid emotions and art. Nana is moved by Jeanne’s destiny and identifies herself with her. This is also the first anticipation of Nana’s death: the sequence ends with the intertitle ‘la mort’, which both Jeanne and Nana face at the end of their films.25 Hence, cinema halls make an important setting, since they influence the characters and shape the narrative. Furthermore, they are not only entertaining places, but express the director’s attitudes towards cinema as an important art form. Godard uses quotations from other films in order to pay homage to American and classical cinema that inspired him. Moreover, a tribute to the New Wave authors is given: the façade of a cinema hall on the Champs-Elysées shows an advertisement for Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959) (in A bout de souffle). In Vivre sa vie, Godard films people waiting for a screening of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) in a documentary manner, adding a commentary in a voice-over: ‘Le cinéma n’est pas drôle. La semaine on ne peut pas y aller pour le travail et le dimanche il y a toujours la queue.’ This commentary, as well as the fact of giving oneself away in a cinema hall, is autobiographical – it bears testimony to a Godard- cinéphile, a regular visitor of these halls, a film critic and a New Wave director.
3. CHARACTERS IN THE CITY
According to Deleuze, the New Wave was a ‘cinema of attitudes and postures’, where characters and their body movements had played a significant role.26 Hence, the long séquence insulaire in A bout de souffle remains dynamic and interesting primarily because of the constant movement of Michel’s and Patricia’s bodies. Their movements also play an important role in the exterior places and emphasise their ties with the city. Hence, in the first scene on the Champs-Elysées, Patricia is shown walking down the Avenue. Michel approaches her and the hand-held camera follows them in a moving shot. The dialogue
24 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, p. 47. 25 R.-F. Lack points out that a parallel can be drawn between Nana and the actress Falconetti (in the role of Jeanne). According to the legend (probably false), the actress finished as a prostitute on the streets of Buenos Aires. (R.-F. Lack, Vivre sa vie: An Introduction and A to Z). 26 ‘The scenery is often made according to the attitudes of the body that it demands and the degrees of freedom that it allows them’. (Deleuze, Cinema 2 : The Time-Image, p. 193).
48 reveals their relationship and emphasises the setting: Godard announces that one of the themes is Michel and Patricia’s love story written into the streets of Paris. The ties between the city and the characters are most visible in the moving shots of their walks through the city. Moreover, the camera follows them from the eye-level perspective, which emphasises their personal story. These ties can also be seen in the scene in which Patricia is on the street, looking at her belly in a mirror inside a shop (the mirror is reflecting both the city and Patricia), and in the shots in which Michel’s name appears in the billboard inscription on a building. In the latter, Michel is identified with the city, since he becomes an integral part of its architecture.27 Through the narrative and the characters’ movements, the city space reflects Lefebvre’s fusion of énergie-espace-temps, perceived through time and movement. In Vivre sa vie, Nana’s destiny (her decision to become a prostitute) is shaped by the lack of rent money and consequent eviction from the apartment. Furthermore, Godard brings together the interior and the exterior by using mirrors and by placing the characters in front of the windows. Hence, Paul’s story on the chicken made of the exterior and the interior metaphorically refers to Nana, since she is portrayed in a medium close-up while he is telling the story. However, it can also refer to the city, since the frame captures a street filmed through a window, from the bistro’s interior. Although only indicated, identification of the city with the characters is already present in these ties between Paris and Nana. Godard’s aim to make a psychological portrait of Nana is visible in the frequent close- ups as she is standing or sitting in front of the windows. However, in the credits and in the police questioning scene, her face is reduced to a silhouette by the use of still shots, close-ups of her profile and opposition of light and dark. Nana is, therefore, equated with a painting, as was the case with the character from Poe’s Oval Portrait. Moreover, the naked acts of Nana’s colleague prostitutes framed by the doors (in the hotel scene) demonstrate the artificiality and immobility of their bodies, in contrast to the always moving bodies of Patricia and Michel. Michel, Patricia and Nana are all connected to the city: they all ‘work’ on the street (they steal cars, sell newspapers or attract male clients, respectively) and, therefore, are an integral part of it. However, they are also outsiders: Patricia is an American, speaking with a strong accent, whereas Nana has a foreign surname.28 Michel is a Frenchman who has already
27 ‘Paris : Michel Poiccard – arrestation imminente’ and ‘Le filet se resserre autour de Michel Poiccard’. 28 As Lack points out, Nana's surname (Kleinfrankenheim) is in fact the name of a small village in Alsace, partly German speaking area, which marks her with provincialism and marginality. (Lack, Vivre sa vie: An Introduction and A to Z).
49 lived in Paris, but he comes to the city from Marseilles only for a short period of time.29 As a criminal chased by the police, he is marked by marginality. Not being able to escape from the city (Nana to province, Michel to Italy), the characters die on its streets instead (Nana on the Rue Esquirol, Michel on the Rue Campagne-Première). Hence, like in de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves the city becomes a closed circle that excludes outsiders and gives no possibility of escape. Both Michel and Nana embody melancholy and disappointment, but they still have ideals: Michel risks his life for love and Nana is romantic, optimistic and, according to her, responsible for her acts. However, whereas Michel chooses his way of life and decides to die, Nana is a victim and a prisoner of her own destiny. Moreover, in comparison to a seductive, self-conscious and open-minded Patricia, Nana is subordinate, humble and naive. Hence, the characters reflect and form the image of the city: from a seductive, romantic and moving place (yet somewhat melancholic), Paris turns into a cruel and sad city (yet nevertheless beautiful). The characters are influenced by the city and they are both integrated (sometimes even identified with) and excluded from it.
4. PARIS: BETWEEN A DOCUMENTARY AND A MYTH
Examining the boundaries between fiction and reality is an important feature of Godard’s work. He stated in one of his interviews: ‘I have always wanted, basically, to make a research film in the form of a spectacle.’ Likewise, Darke points out that, whereas Godard’s object is the depiction of modern life in Paris, his subject has always been cinema itself.30 Godard’s procedures can be more easily understood if one takes into consideration the interest of the New Wave movement in depicting the world as it was and, on the other hand, the auteur policy and their struggle for establishing cinema as an art form.
Paris as a document
The documentary value of A bout de souffle lies particularly in the scenes of Michel’s and Patricia’s wanderings through the city. In order to benefit from the spontaneity of his
29 The first sequences are filmed in Marseilles and on the 'route nationale' and they show Michel's arrival to Paris. Michel's hometown is not specified. 30 Both in: Darke, Alphaville, p. 28.
50 actors, Godard often hired non-professionals and gave them instructions at the last moment. He would even whisper newly invented dialogue to the actors during the shooting.31 Boundaries between actors and characters, therefore, became blurred, as it was often emphasised by the director, who claimed that his aim was, in fact, to make a documentary on Seberg and Belmondo (who were constantly followed by the camera).32 The shooting on location brought another documentary value to the film, since Godard succeeded in capturing the pulse and rhythm of the city: people on the street are real Parisians, not actors. They sometimes enter the frames unexpectedly and cover the characters, whereas some of them turn around or stop to look at the camera and the actors. This contributes to the realism of the film, but also emphasises its ‘invented’ side, since it makes the filmmaking process visible.33 Godard’s documentary approach can also be noticed in the portrayal of young people, their popular culture and modes of behaviour and inhabiting the city (Lefebvre’s perceived space). The jazz score, Michel’s obsession with American cars, depiction of nightlife on the Champs-Elysées, scenes of characters walking in the street and drinking coffee, wearing fashionable clothes and using the ‘real’ vocabulary34 contribute to the realism of Godard’s Paris. Moreover, Michel’s melancholy and pessimism could be considered as an incarnation of le mal des jeunes and according to Esquenazi, the portrait of Patricia’s and Michel’s relationship reflects the situation between men and women at the time.35 The scene of General Eisenhower’s arrival to Paris bears testimony to the historical reality and through Michel’s commentary on a modernist building Godard expressed an early criticism of renovations in the city centre (Lefebvre’s conceived space): ‘Regarde cette maison ou je suis né. En face ils ont construit une maison horrible. Ça détruit le moral, les maisons pareilles. Toute la beauté du carrefour est fichue maintenant’.36 However, a stronger urban, social and political criticism
31 Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 47. 32 Interview in Le monde, 18 March 1960, quoted in: Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p. 83. 33 There are many other 'mistakes' in the film that were deliberately not corrected: the use of a hand-held camera, sometimes hidden in the wheel-chair, resulted with a shaky and slightly tilted image (especially in the scene in which Patricia is selling newspapers on the Champs-Elysées). Also, Belmondo loses a sunglass lens in one scene and it reappears in the next sequence, as if nothing had happened (since the scene was shot in a close-up, it is improbable that the mistake was accidentally overseen). 34 Hence, Michel talks in slang, using words like: dingue, dégueulasse, zigouiller, minouche, trouillard etc., to which Patricia often replies with 'Qu'est-ce que c'est (dingue)'? 35 Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p. 85. 36 Godard points out the problems of the renovation and restoration of the city centre, in particular the insertion of modernist architecture in historical neighbourhoods (as in the the îlots insalubres).
51 is absent from the film, since the city remains primarily attractive and the film politically indifferent.37 A stronger social criticism is expressed in Vivre sa vie through the theme of prostitution. Godard’s aim was, again, to depict reality through a documentary approach, like the Neo-realists who influenced him.38 However, Godard’s object changed: he was not interested anymore in young people and their way of life, their obsession with America and popular culture, but searched to examine the social problems of the less privileged members of the society (perceived space).39 He filmed real Parisian prostitutes near the Châtelet, provided quotes from a research on prostitution in Paris and depicted their way of life in a series of short still shots (a hand turning off the light or locking the door, Nana putting her make up or a man’s hand taking the money from his pocket). By presenting the violent suburbs and Nana’s eviction from her apartment, Godard announced his interest in the housing problems and increased rents in the centre (conceived space). The Algerian issue is tackled in the scene of the café in the suburbs, which proves Godard’s political concerns which were, nevertheless, still secondary. Unmotivated sequences and the actors’ improvisation, as in the scene/interview with Brice Parain, make Godard’s Paris bear testimony to its social and cultural atmosphere in the 1960s.40 Finally, Nana is both a character and Anna Karina (like Michel and Patricia are Belmondo and Seberg),41 which is clearly indicated in the séquence insulaire by Godard’s presence and the story of an artist/director making a portrait of his own wife.
The invented and intertextual Paris
These cinematic cities, although realistic, are also presented as ‘invented’ cities. In A bout de souffle, Godard highlights the spectacle by filming cinema halls, basing the plot on
37 For example, there are no references to the war in Algeria or critical comments given in the aforementioned scene of Eisenhower's arrival. Godard and his characters are not interested in politics, like most of the New Wave directors and the young French people of the period. 38 'Il ne s'agit pas d'épier Nana (Reichenbach), ou de la traquer (Bresson), ni davantage de la surprendre (Rouch), mais seulement de la suivre: donc rien d'autre que d'être bon et juste (Rossellini).' Spécial Nouvelle vague, Cahiers du cinéma No. 138 (December 1962), quoted in: Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 104. 39 This is where Esquenazi recognises Godard's shift to classical culture (Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, pp. 127-129). 40 Brice Parain was an influential philosopher of the time. In the film, he played his own role without having the screenplay/questions in advance. Hence, most lines that he pronounced were his own thoughts and answers to the questions that Godard was whispering to Karina during the filming. (Bergala, Godard au travail, pp. 113- 114). 41 Karina was also given instructions in the last moments before the filming, Screenplay, reproduced in: Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 105.
52 the Film Noir model (a criminal milieu and an insolent gangster that meets a tragic end) or underlining ‘artificiality’ of the characters (Michel imitates Humphrey Bogart and strongly resembles (and makes references) to Melville’s Bob in Bob le Flambeur). Intertextual city is also expressed by showing American cars, an American character and by using basic Hollywood continuity editing, which pay homage to Hollywood B-production films.42 The aesthetics of Huston’s Los Angeles is directly transposed into Godard’s Paris in the night scenes and in strong oppositions of light and dark (in the elevator scene and in the dark passage that characters take when they get off the taxi). The cinematic/invented nature of Paris is further emphasised by Godard’s presence in the film: he is breaking with the city’s temporal continuity, in particular through the use of jump cuts that make the city fragmented. Furthermore, the use of the iris (heritage of silent cinema), the characters talking to the camera, deliberate mistakes or a girl selling Cahiers du cinéma on the street (with other references to the New Wave, usually insiders’ jokes), clearly emphasise the invented side of this cinematic city and reflect the director’s aim ‘to show and show (him) showing’.43 Nevertheless, the process of filmmaking (the invented side of the city) is more visible in Vivre sa vie, where Godard’s innovative approach replaces the old realism, in which the film techniques were dissimulated (for example the editing process was made invisible)44 and the characters, actions and places filmed in order to create an effect of real. On the contrary, in Vivre sa vie, the characters are artificial (Nana is presented as a painting and an actress, both Jeanne/Falconetti and Karina) and the events are, likewise, theatrical. Hence, Nana dies in front of a film studio, on which Godard commented in an interview: ‘Cette mort, pesonne ne peut y croire: on voit qu'elle a lieu devant le Restaurant des Studios. On sait que c'est du cinéma et du théâtre’.45 Similar effect is produced with the photograph of Champs-Elysées and the film division in twelve ‘tableaux’ that emphasise artificiality and a theatrical aspect of the city.
42 Although breaking with classical tradition, Esquenazi proves that in A bout de souffle Godard continued to use the continuity editing, but only made it faster by cutting the 'unnecessary' parts. The result was a mixture of innovation and tradition (Esquenazi, Godard et la société française, p. 77). That was probably one of the reasons for the film’s great popularity. 43 Colin MacCabe, Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics (London: British Film Institute and Macmillian, 1980), quoted in: Darke, Alphaville, p. 11. 44 André Bazin especially defended this type of realism by praising sequence-shots and le montage interdit. (Bazin, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ?, pp. 49-61). 45 'C'est une fin typiquement théâtrale. J'aurais presque voulu qu'après sa mort Nana puisse se relever et qu'on voie les caméras et les gens du film qui plient bagage.' (Godard in Le monde, 20 September 1962, quoted in Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 118). Only a year later, in Le Mépris, Godard filmed cameras, directors and crew. This procedure, however, was most profoundly explored in La Chinoise. Moreover, the obvious reference to Zola’s novel makes Nana also a literary character.
53 The setting is usually filmed from unconventional angles (the characters can be filmed from the back and one character can completely hide the other), and the dialogue synchronised by the author, which underlines the director’s presence in the film. The plot is even more loosened (a break with continuity editing becomes more radical) in favour of a reflexive nature of filmmaking. Moreover, the realism of film space is broken by leaving out the atmosphere sound (as in the scene of the Champs-Elysées by night) or the sound of the dialogues (replaced by subtitles, in the séquence insulaire) and by innovative editing (such as by repeating the ending of the previous shot at the beginning of the following in the séquence insulaire). They break with the fusion of énergie-espace-temps of cinematic city and contribute to the image of an invented and mythical Paris. As Godard puts it several years later, ‘(l’)imaginaire n’est pas le reflet du réel. Il est le réel de ce reflet’.46 Finally, in A bout de souffle, numerous references to New Wave films and authors demonstrate Godard’s wish to define himself as an auteur within a group. In Vivre sa vie, these references are still present (Truffaut, cinema halls and the film dedication to the American ‘série B’), but Godard’s wish to appear as an individual auteur is expressed through his more significant presence in the film, a shift to more ‘serious’ themes (prostitution) and a sharper criticism on the society.
5. THE LIVED SPACE OF GODARD’S PARIS: CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Paris of A bout de souffle produced a real revolution in the imagination of the audience at the time – for the first time, Paris became ‘free’, entertaining, attractive, provocative, young and, most importantly, authentic. The audience, especially young people, loved it. They recognised themselves in the film because it reflected their way of life, but also their pessimism and fear of ‘le monde (…) qui se fragmente’.47 The film’s success revolutionized the French film industry, since it reduced the popularity of quality authors and their artificial and traditional depictions of Paris. Taken as the movement’s manifest, A bout de souffle influenced many New Wave directors and their future cinematic cities. Moreover, we can consider that it brought some changes in the French society by attracting masses (especially the middle class) and by promoting popular culture.
46 La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967). 47 Baecque, La nouvelle vague, p.121.
54 Nevertheless, Godard later stated that his film was too popular and misunderstood by the audience.48 In Vivre sa vie, therefore, the entertaining and the Hollywood-like cinematic Paris was replaced by a Paris of social problems and by reflections on the process of filmmaking. Godard’s criticism was not aimed against the film industry anymore, but against the problems of the society. Paris remained realist and provocative, since it depicted prostitution in a somewhat too explicit way – some scenes were judged ‘inappropriate’ (for evoking ménage à trois) and had to be left out from the final version. Hence, Godard’s Paris remained subversive in depicting forbidden themes. The film was a considerable box-office success, but it never reached the popularity of Godard’s first feature. Although they embody pessimism and social critique, sometimes even ugliness (less in A bout de souffle, more in Vivre sa vie), these cinematic cities are primarily beautiful and loved by their director/inhabitant. Godard demonstrated his affection towards the city by inserting autobiographical elements (streets and cafés that he visited every day, monuments that he admired or cinema halls and films he watched there). A social critique (perceived space) is present in Vivre sa vie; however, a strong urban critique (conceived space) is absent from these films. They are also politically indifferent – the historical reality is marked, but it is not an object of interest. Godard’s Paris is, therefore, still a beautiful place (since it mostly portrays the city centre) and a city of personal histories. The city is emphasised and it influences the characters, but it does not significantly shape the narrative. The two following films in our analysis will show a much different and, in these terms, significantly transformed cinematic Paris.
48 Spécial Nouvelle Vague, Cahiers du cinéma, No. 138 (December 1962), reproduced in : Godard, Godard par Godard: les années Karina, p.47.
55
CHAPTER 4
PERIPHERY AND THE FEARS OF MODERNITY: PARIS IN ALPHAVILLE AND DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE
Toutes les choses étranges sont normales dans cette putain de ville.
Lemmy Caution, Alphaville
Alphaville and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle, made in 1965 and 1967, were already marked with the consequences of the shift in Godard's career, characterised by hostility towards America and another change in attitudes towards the auteur policy, expressed by the director's political engagement. Consequently, the image of Paris in Godard’s films profoundly changed, as if the city was all of a sudden rejected by the author. Moreover, the phenomenology of the city and examination of boundaries between documentary and fiction became Godard's central points of interest. Nevertheless, these films continued using certain themes and stylistic means of A bout de souffle and Vivre sa vie. The aim of this chapter is to examine similarities and differences between the two films, as well as to compare them with the first two films of our analysis. In doing so, we will follow the structure of the previous chapter: after examining the city’s importance in the narrative, we will explore its places. Furthermore, we will explore the relationship between the characters and the city and the city as a document and an invented/intertextual place. Finally, a comment on the city as a lived space with concluding remarks will be given.
1. THE CITY AS A CHARACTER AND A THEME
The titles of these two films1 already indicate that the theme will be, on the one hand, a portrayal of an invented city Alphaville (however, the city is visibly Paris) and, on the other hand, of the district of Paris (la région parisienne). We discover Alphaville, a city of the future, through the eyes of a character-outsider, a secret agent Lemmy Caution who arrives in its suburbs at the beginning of the film. Hence, Godard is given an excuse to examine the city thoroughly and to reveal its characteristics in details. A spectator is given information that the narrative is taking place around 1985, that the city is governed by a giant computer Alpha 60, that it belongs to another galaxy and that the ‘old world’ called les Pays extérieurs is around 9,000 km away. The city is divided into northern and southern zone (in the first there is snow, in the second there is sun) and surrounded by the Boulevard Périphérique. The city is also emphasised by frequent shots of the façades of buildings or their parts (mostly in medium shots and from a low angle), in which the camera moves slowly, in pan shots, or rapidly, from one edge to another.2 The only panoramic shot of the city is shown through the window of the Chief Engineer’s office in the Control Complex. However, the image is too bright and the city’s elements (mostly skyscrapers and cranes) are covered with fog and, consequently, almost imperceptible. This is probably due to restrictions of filming on location, since many elements had to be left out and no artificial setting had been built for the film. Alphaville is, therefore, mostly made of fragments; however, oppositions of light and dark and the constant presence of circles and straight lines make it coherent, which is explained in the following part of the chapter. In Deux ou trois choses, long shots and panoramic shots are more frequent. The still long shots of the city are used either independently or in alternation with the shots of the characters. They are usually accompanied by Godard-the-narrator’s commentaries or by the characters’ testimonies to their way of life in the city. The film starts with several still long shots of a construction site, a highway and a square in a cité, while the commentary in a voice-over criticises the government politics for creating the district of Paris. Panoramic shots of buildings in long takes are also frequent: in one scene, the camera films the grand ensemble from a high angle (probably from the roof of a skyscraper), moving from left to right and then
1 As we have already noted in Introduction, the full titles of these films are Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle: elle - la région parisienne. 2 In the opening sequence, the rapidly moving camera films suburban skyscrapers from one edge to another.
57 the other way round, making two pans of 180˚. Moreover, in the scene where Juliette talks about how she became a prostitute, the camera films the buildings from a low angle, in a 360˚ pan, which reveals Godard’s aim to examine the city in a systematic way and from different points of view. Since the city is a theme of these films, it is difficult to talk about establishing shots or unmotivated sequences. Shots of the city frequently interrupt scenes in the interiors, illustrating dialogues or thoughts (as in Alphaville’s scenes in Lemmy’s hotel room or in the shots in the old hotel), but are also often unmotivated (as in the scene in the American’s flat in Deux ou trois choses).3 Hence, the city is omnipresent; it significantly shapes the plot and consequently, plays the role of a (main) character in the film. Finally, dialogues and commentaries in a voice-over (whether Alpha 60’s, Lemmy’s or Godard’s) analyse the city and reveal the role of a director-sociologist whose aim was to examine its perceived and conceived aspects. In Alphaville, it is Lemmy with his somewhat vulgar discourse who plays the role of a researcher and a critic (as it can be seen in the quotation from the beginning), whereas in Deux ou trois choses this role is mostly played by Godard and his whispering commentaries in a voice-over (as in the first sequence, where he criticises the urban policies of de Gaulle and his prefect Paul Delouvrier). Moreover, the director-narrator straightforwardly reveals his aim to be an objective observer of the city and its inhabitants: Je scrute la vie de la cité, de ses habitants, et les liens qui les unissent, avec autant d’intensité que le biologiste scrute les rapports de l’individu et de la race en évolution. C’est seulement ainsi que je pourrai alors m’attaquer aux problèmes de la pathologie sociale en formant l’espoir d’une vraie cité nouvelle. Reflections on the city and its ties with the inhabitants are also expressed in Juliette’s monologues; however, they are somewhat incoherent (as if she was thinking out loud) and usually not coming to conclusions.4 The city is, therefore, a subject of these films, which is in contrast to the depictions in A bout de souffle and Vivre sa vie, where topography was clearly
3 The scene in which Henry Dickson and Lemmy talk on the stairs of an old hotel is interrupted three times, firstly by a pan shot of a modernist building and then by blinking close-ups of relativity formula. These scenes illustrate a dialogue on the impossibility of adapting oneself to the city and on Alpha 60’s power. In Deux ou trois choses, in the scene of the American’s flat, the camera shows the room with Juliette and Marianne walking with the bags on their heads. It is followed by a shot of a construction site, inserted for about twenty-five seconds, after which the camera returns to film the room. The voice-over of the American client giving instructions to two women can still be heard in the inserted scene, which points out the links between American influence, rapid urban development and prostitution. 4 In the scene in the American's flat, Juliette states: 'Chaque habitant a des rapports avec des parties définies de la ville...Ah oui, l'image qu'il en a est baignée de souvenirs et des significations...la clarté physique de cette image...Paris est une ville mystérieuse, asphyxiante, naturelle...'.
58 indicated and the parts of the city highlighted, but the characters, filmed mostly in the ancestral city centre, rarely gave critical analysis and judgments of their environment. .
2. CHOICE OF PLACES
Exterior places: the periphery
The ancestral Paris is almost completely absent from these films. Although they are filmed in both the Parisian centre and on its periphery, the films focus on buildings and roads of Parisian outskirts and suburbs. The city centre is present, but without its landmarks and is reduced to fragments. In Alphaville, some night scenes are shot on Parisian avenues. However, they are usually short and famous monuments are not shown. Hence, the city is deprived of its historical and cultural heritage and could be any other city. In Deux ou trois choses, the centre is reduced to the scenes of construction sites and interiors (cafés, shops and beauty parlours). Landmarks are present in several short scenes (Champs-Elysées, the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe), but they are filmed along with cranes and machines of their close surroundings.5 Alphaville shows façades of modern buildings constructed on the outskirts of Paris during the 50s and the 60s, such as buildings in La Défense or La Maison de la Radio. The latter is filmed at night in a medium pan shot. The straight lines of its façade and lights from the windows emphasise the dependence of the city on technology and geometrical shape of its architecture. Henry Dickson’s line on how people that cannot adapt to the city often commit suicide highlights its terrifying impact. The towers of the grands ensembles produce a similar effect of a distopyan and cruel city: a H.L.M. skyscraper (Habitations à loyer modéré) is filmed in a vertical crane shot and renamed to Hôpital de la longue maladie where those who can not adapt and are not executed, undergo a treatment of propaganda brainwashing. The city is, therefore, an enemy of individuality that controls its inhabitants and turns them into robots. Alphaville’s streets and boulevards follow the same rational order as the city’s architecture; they are geometrically shaped and, moreover, they are defined by opposition of light and dark. Hence, straight lines and circles shape and define the city, from its whole (it is
5 For example, Godard shows a construction of a bridge on the Seine and a construction site near the Champs- Elysées. A short scene where Juliette passes by a pimp and a prostitute is placed on the Champs-Elysées, with the Arc de Triomphe in the background.
59 surrounded by the circular peripheral boulevard), to its elements (‘Nous prîmes la tangente au cercle de quartier du centre’). Close-ups of street indicators (arrows and traffic lights) and other circular blinking reflectors highlight the contrast of light and dark and the presence of these geometric elements. The rational organisation of the city creates a feeling of subordination to the laws of logic and of impossibility of progress. Alpha 60 is limited in the same way: ‘c’est quelque chose (…) qui avance sur la ligne droite et pourtant à l’arrivée, qui a bouclé la boucle’ and is automatically self-destructed once it becomes aware of itself.6 Streets are mostly filmed at night and interspersed with close-ups of traffic lights, arrows, car lights or blinking inscriptions in neon. Unlike in A bout de souffle, they do not represent an attractive and entertaining city of lights, but create an impression of a dystopian city dependent on electricity and technology. This impression is also created by a constant alternation of dark and light, dark threatening music, buzzing sounds of Alpha 60 and empty streets. However, moving shots, rapid camera movements and the fast-paced editing create a dynamic city which, to an extent, resembles the Paris of A bout de souffle. In Deux ou trois choses most of these procedures (night shots, rapid camera movements or fast-paced editing) are absent. The film’s pace is slower: long takes and still shots prevail and create an impression of indifference and boredom. This is enlarged by the choice of setting, buildings and towers of the grand ensemble in La Courneuve, in Parisian suburbs.7 The image of an unattractive and alienated city is created by the shots of its identical buildings, monotonous façades (predominantly grey, light blue and white), as well as by social problems of their inhabitants (such as expensive bills, prostitution or the impossibility of finding employment) expressed by the characters’ commentaries.8 An almost complete absence of music, replaced by the noise of cranes and cars or by leaving out atmosphere sound, contributes to the rough atmosphere of the Parisian suburbs. Other scenes show construction sites, shops, petrol stations, walls covered with advertisements, an auto repair shop or highways, in Marc Augé’s words, the architectural non-lieux, that is, places deprived from memory, significance, history or any sentimental link.9 Hence, the Paris of Deux ou trois choses loses its identity, in the same way as its
6 Both lines are pronounced by Lemmy, with my emphasis. Chris Darke also notices recurrence of these geometric elements, arguing that straight lines represent progress (Darke, Alphaville, p. 61). 7 Topography is taken from: Annie Fourcault, ‘Banlieue’, in : T. Jousse, T. Paquot, La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), p. 130. 8 For example, a woman is saying how she cannot find a job because she is too old and Juliette is talking how she has to manage somehow, since her husband does not earn enough money. 9 Marc Augé, Non-lieux: introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Paris : Éd. du Seuil, 1992), pp. 100-101. Similarly, Chris Darke describes most Alphaville places as non-places (non-lieux), explaining,
60 inhabitants. Moreover, its construction sites somewhat resemble Rossellini’s devastated post- war Berlin, to which Godard paid homage in another Parisian cinematic suburb.10 The street as a place intended for socialising is completely absent: it is replaced by shots of traffic jams on peripheral boulevards or by scenes in which Juliette drives her car on the wide suburban avenues. To an extent, the Paris of Deux ou trois choses resembles the city of Vivre sa vie: it deals with the theme of prostitution, it is filmed in long takes and still shots, divided by intertitles11 and it abandons continuity editing (links between the sequences are now completely erased and the plot even more fragmented).12 Nevertheless, the move to the suburbs is even more radical and the interiors, as well as the characters, differ in many ways.
Interior places
Alphaville’s interior places are more explored than its exterior, shown in fragments. Long takes are more significantly present and the camera sometimes follows the characters while they walk through buildings.13 Interior public places are mostly functionalist modern buildings with geometrical interior design: straight lines and circles are expressed by long hallways, pillars and orthogonal lines on the windows or by rectangular counters and spiral stairs (as in the Institute of General Semantics). Moreover, a play between the exterior and the interior is visible through reflections in windows and mirrors. The rationalism of city planning is, therefore, transposed into its interiors. The constant play between dark and light also reflects the city’s streets (as in the completely dark Institute’s conference hall, where the light only comes from a projector and a portable battery). A dilapidated hotel constitutes an exception in Alphaville’s interiors – its filthiness, broken windows and an ordinary light bulb hanging on the wire stand in contrast to geometrical and sterile Institute and Ministry buildings, illuminated by neon lights. Hence, the
however, that no cinematic place is a non-lieu, since it has a specific function in the narrative (Darke, Alphaville, p. 33). 10 In La Chinoise, in one of the scenes shot in the Parisian suburbs, there is an inscription ‘Théâtre année zéro’ on one of the dilapidated walls. 11 The intertitles, however, do not anticipate setting and action, but ideas, such as: ‘18 leçons sur la société industrielle’, ‘Psychologie de la forme’ or ‘Le grand espoir du XXe siècle’. 12 The screenplay gives the links between sequences, which Godard left out from the film: for example, Juliette meeting a client on the street or picking up Robert in the café. Bergala compares this procedure with Rossellini's juxtaposed sequences. (Bergala, Godard au travail, pp. 330- 332). The result is that it is sometimes difficult to follow the narration. Significantly, Godard-the-narrator states in a voice- over: ‘on n'a pas besoin d'événements pour photographier et tuer le monde’. 13 Hence, in the first hotel scene, a two minutes’ sequence shot shows Lemmy entering the hotel, taking the elevator and walking down the hallway until he reaches his room.
61 hotel can be seen as remain of the old world (like the house of the scientist in Metropolis or an antiques shop in 1984): although led by brainwashed inhabitants of Alphaville, it is mostly inhabited by newcomers and outsiders. One of them is Henry Dickson, a former secret agent of the Pays Extérieurs who still remembers the old world where artists existed, keeps a book of Eluard’s poetry and calls his séductrice ‘Madame Récamier’ and ‘Madame Bovary’. However, the hotel is not a safe place or a refuge from Alpha 60, since most of its guests commit suicide and Dickson dies. Similarly, the scientist and the shop owner in the aforementioned works collaborate with the power structures. In Deux ou trois choses, shops and beauty parlours are the places where Juliette spends the money she earned as a prostitute and thinks about life and meaning of words and where its workers, mostly middle-class young women, talk about their lives to the camera. Cafés and bistros, which are absent from Alphaville, have a similar function like in the first two films: these are the places for drinking coffee14 and playing pinball, where pimps and (occasional) prostitutes hang out. They are also places for conversations on art, philosophy or the meaning of words, such as in the two juxtaposed sequences in which a girl talks to Ivanov, a fictional Nobel Prize winner in literature, and Juliette’s husband Robert attempts to lead a ‘real conversation’ with a woman sitting at the table next to his. However, unlike Nana and Brice Parain who led a long and, to an extent, prolific conversation, here the interlocutors cannot understand each other. The third juxtaposed sequence in the café highlights the impossibility of communication and a world where nothing makes sense: a man reads sentences from randomly chosen books while another pointlessly writes them down. In both films, characters do not go to cinema; instead, they go shopping and to the hairdresser’s (Juliette) or to execution shows (Natasha takes Lemmy to a pool to watch ‘le truc lumière et son’). Moreover, the old theatres of Alphaville are used for executing its non- adapted citizens. Hence, in the cities governed by logic, there is no room for cinema halls or theatres, these symbolical places for experiencing art and meeting with oneself, which emphasises spiritual emptiness. Alphaville’s interior private places are connected with the exterior. In the séquence insulaire, characters are filmed in a medium long shot while standing in a dark room, in front of large windows with a view of the city and its lights. The following scene shows the city by day, filmed through a window in which we can see Natasha’s reflection in a medium-close up, holding Eluard’s book of poetry (significantly entitled Capitale de la douleur). This creates an
14 A long sequence with a cup of coffee in the close-up is one of the most striking examples of a purely optical and sound situation.
62 effect of fusion of private and public places and points out the ties between the city and the characters.15 Nevertheless, the hotel room is a place for intimacy, where Natasha and Lemmy create a sort of love dance (through a series of shots, mostly in close-up, accompanied by romantic music), while Natasha, suddenly remembering the meaning of the words consciousness (la conscience) and love, recites love poetry in a voice-over. In contrast, the séquence insulaire of Deux ou trois choses cannot be really defined as such: a short still shot without music shows Juliette in bed and Robert joining her. There is no intimacy between them, poetry is replaced by a sociological book and a magazine and their conversation on love is quickly ended by Robert’s indifferent response: ‘Je ne sais pas’, to which Juliette replies ‘Si tu ne sais pas, passe-moi une cigarette’. Hence, the apartments of the grands ensembles hinder communication and alienate the characters from one another. Other apartments are used as places of prostitution and one of them (that belongs to Juliette’s neighbour) is used as a kindergarten at the same time, decorated with advertisements for travel destinations. However, its landlord works in exchange for food provisions.16 The absurdity of modern life in the grands ensembles is, therefore, driven into extreme: the misery of its inhabitants stands in contrast to the colourful advertisements and consumer products (as in Juliette’s kitchen).17 The interiors, mostly decorated with bright primary colours and symbols of popular culture (comics, posters, radios and magazines), emphasise this contrast even more. In the scene in which Juliette’s son wakes her up as she lies in the bed, the blue of Juliette’s sweater, the white of the sheet and the red of the blanket, placed in the order of the French flag, subtly give the impression that France itself has become a product.
3. THE FUSION OF CHARACTERS AND THE CITY
Alphaville’s inhabitants are profoundly shaped by the city: brainwashed and uncreative, they obey the laws of logic and act automatically, repeating meaningless sentences, such as ‘Je vais très bien, merci. Je vous en prie.’ They are deprived of their identity and forbidden to ask questions and to feel. Words like love and consciousness are erased from their memories. They depend on machines and electricity and die or end up
15 Moreover, a part of the shot in the bathroom, in which Lemmy and Natasha talk about Alphaville’s spies, is filmed in the mirror, reflecting both the bathroom and the city through a window. 16 A reference to Nana (on a poster) points out the resemblance of the place with the hotel rooms in Vivre sa vie. 17 Likewise, the scene in which a bill collector enters the bathroom while a woman is in the bath naked emphasises this somewhat surrealistic portrayal of the housing problem in the grands ensembles.
63 completely lost without them.18 Women are reduced to objects; they have tattoos with control numbers, serve as decoration or work as séductrices and accompagnatrices.19 The characters of Deux ou trois choses show similar characteristics: they constantly repeat the same actions – sleep, work and eat.20 Their lives are not shaped by machines, but, on the one hand, by rational city planning that produces depressive and monotonous surroundings and, on the other hand, by colourful advertisements for consumer products. Women are also objectified, obliged to sell their bodies in order to pay the rent and buy things.21 There is not even a trace of a self-conscious and seductive Patricia in these films. Characters are identified with the city: elle in the film refers both to Juliette and the district of Paris and she is frequently filmed in front the grand ensemble’s housing blocks. In the aforementioned sequence in which Juliette talks about how she became a prostitute and examines her ties with the city, the camera makes a 360˚ pan of buildings from a low angle. This reveals a subordinated relationship: Juliette is not really connected with space; she is defined and entrapped by it. In both films, the characters are often filmed in medium close- ups and close-ups and, whereas one can still see some emotions on the faces of Alphaville’s inhabitants (such as Natasha’s melancholic gaze and tears),22 Juliette and Robert’s faces remain inexpressive. According to Juliette, ‘un paysage, c’est pareil qu’un visage’. Likewise, the rationalised and uniform surroundings make the expression impossible. Juliette’s face reflects emptiness and indifference and she defines herself as ‘pas encore morte’. In Alphaville, camera often follows the characters while moving, which resembles the procedures used in A bout de souffle. The characters’ movements sometimes reflect the city’s geometrical layout and rational order. The straight line is reflected in the long takes of Lemmy’s walks through the corridors, in medium long shots, while the circle is accentuated by Natasha and Lemmy’s circular movements in the entrance hall of the Institute, followed by the equally moving camera).23 Furthermore, the characters are used in order to explore the interiors: in Alphaville, they frequently pass through Lemmy’s bathroom and Juliette’s
18 After destroying Alpha 60, Lemmy narrates the destiny of Alphaville’s inhabitants, in a voice-over: ‘Ceux qui n’étaient pas morts ni asphyxiés par l’absence de lumière circulaient à une vitesse folle, comme les fourmis’. 19 In the nerve centre of Alpha 60, a woman is standing on the table while the Chief Engineer is examining her. In another shot, a naked woman is exhibited like a sculpture in a glass cage. 20 Hence, in the kitchen, Juliette asks Robert about their plans for the evening. He replies: to sleep, to wake up, to eat…and to die, to which Juliette responds: ‘Et après’? 21 However, whereas Nana becomes a prostitute in order to pay the rent, Juliette does it in order to buy things, for example, to buy herself a dress. 22 Lemmy's and Natasha's conversation reveal that Alphaville's inhabitants look ‘triste et sombre’, since they lack electricity. Likewise, Lemmy makes a comment on the seductress Béatrice in a voice-over: 'Je fus frappé par la tristesse et la dureté de son visage. Décidément quelque chose ne tournait pas en rond dans la capitale de cette galaxie'. 23 In the latter scene, Natasha states: 'La mort et la vie sont à l'intérieur d'une même cercle.’
64 neighbour enters the room through one door and comes out from another. The aforementioned play with mirrors and windows emphasises the characters’ ties with the city. Hence, the characters cannot be separated from the city, but are shaped by it and identified with it. As in the fist two films of our analysis, the main characters are outsiders: Lemmy Caution comes from the Pays Extérieurs, whereas Juliette is of Russian origin (however, she represents a typical middle-class French woman of the 1960s). In contrast to the non-adapted Michel and Nana that cannot change the city, Lemmy has the power to reshape space and to destroy it. His marginality is, therefore, presented as a favourable characteristic. Juliette, on the contrary, has neither energy nor motivation to change her surroundings.24 Alphaville differs from other Godard’s films by a happy ending, since Lemmy and Natasha succeed in escaping from the city. In the last scene, Natasha remembers how to say ‘Je vous aime’ and is, therefore, saved. This reflects Godard’s conviction that only love and art can save the technologically dependent world and ‘transforme(r) la nuit en lumière.’25 This optimism, present in the first two films by Michel’s love and Nana’s belief in being responsible for her acts, is almost completely absent from Deux ou trois choses. Although the possibility of creating art that would change the world is explored, the characters remain empty and cold like the buildings that surround them.
4. THE CITY: DOCUMENTARY AND INVENTED
Paris as a document
Alphaville is a futuristic city and, therefore, primarily invented and fictitious. Nevertheless, as we have shown in our first chapter, a futuristic city is always a response to the ‘experience of our own present’. In the same way, Alphaville expresses Godard’s criticism on the rapid urban development, politics and transformation of the society in the 1960s’ Paris. As he stated: ‘J’ai raisonné sur le présent et je n’ai pas imaginé (…) la société dans vingt ans.
24 Many other characters in the films are foreigners and speak with an accent: the Chief Engineer (played by the Hungarian actor László Szabó), Henry Dickson (the Russian actor Akim Tamiroff, playing a Russian) and Karina, who is Danish (in Alphaville) or an American and a Serbian speaking in their native languages (in Deux ou trois choses). The recurrence of foreigners in Godard's films can be seen as an autobiographical characteristic, since the Swiss-born Godard was also, to an extent, an outsider in France. 25 When Alpha 60 asks Lemmy what it is that transforms night into day, he replies: 'La poésie'.
65 Au contraire, je raconte l’histoire d’un homme d’il y a vingt ans qui découvre le monde actuel et s’en étonne.’26 Although the film does not show famous monuments and landmarks in Paris, a spectator of the period could easily recognise the recently constructed La Maison de la Radio, La Défense or the grands ensembles of the Parisian suburbs. Moreover, strong criticism of world politics is given through references to Godard's recent history, such as the American involvement in the Second World War (Professor Von Braun was sent to Los Alamos in order to work on an ‘invention’) and to totalitarian regimes (executions, the SS sign on an elevator and control numbers tattooed on women’s bodies undoubtedly refer to Nazi Germany). A criticism of technical progress and its result, consumer society, is expressed through a presence of symbols of popular culture, such as television sets, American cars and pin-up magazines. The séductrices reveal Godard's interest in the problem of prostitution, studied in depth in Vivre sa vie and Deux ou trois choses. However, the strongest criticism of French society comes from Alpha 60, a machine governing ‘la société des fourmis’, the programmed and brainwashed citoyens-robots. Machines are filmed by the same camera movement as the buildings (pan shots or moving shots describing it from one edge to another, as in the scene in the ‘partie invisible d’Alpha 60’ or in the shot in Von Braun’s office). They express Godard’s message that the Paris of the period, with its rational city planning and its modern rectangular buildings, was already turning into a machine. Technology and the city’s development, a source of inspiration for the director, are presented in an exact opposite way than in the Lumières’, Vertov’s or Ruttmann’s films: glorifying and celebratory in the former, in Alphaville, they are depicted as absurd and repulsive. Documentary scenes, like the ones in A bout de souffle and Vivre sa vie (shots of real passers-by and prostitutes) are missing in Alphaville. The interview form, already applied in Vivre sa vie with Brice Parain, was planned with Roland Barthes, but he rejected the role.27 However, Godard responded critically to structuralism, the major intellectual stream of the period, by highlighting limitations of words.28 This is also explored in Deux ou trois choses, with Juliette’s comments on how her feelings cannot be expressed by words and with extreme
26 Yvonne Baby, 'Dresser des embuscades dans le planification: entretien avec Jean-Luc Godard', Le Monde, 6 May 1965, quoted in: Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 249. 27 As Bergala explains, Barthes rejected Godard's invitation from the fear of being shown as ridiculous. 28 In the lecture in the Institute of General Semantics, Alpha 60 (Godard) states: 'La signification des mots et des expressions n'est plus perçue. Un mot isolé ou un détail isolé dans un essaim peuvent être compris. Mais la signification de l'ensemble échappe’.
66 close-ups of only parts of inscriptions that have a different and sometimes opposite meaning to the whole, such as ‘drogue(rie)’.29 In Deux ou trois choses, the city has a more significant documentary value: the shots of streets, squares and construction sites bear testimony to the full transformation of Paris in 1967. Moreover, Godard’s approach was somewhat sociological, since he collected stories and testimonies to life in Parisian suburbs from articles and interviews and included them in the film: many scenes and dialogues were adapted or directly quoted from the aforementioned Catherine Vimenet’s article on prostitution in the grands ensembles. The film depicts both the phenomenon of ‘prostitution de voisinage’ and Godard’s conviction that one could not live in the society of the period without prostituting oneself in one way or another.30 The documentary approach can also be seen in the scenes in which characters speak about their lives in the suburbs, either in a voice-over, while the camera films buildings and advertisements (the children’s commentaries on how they do not have a place to play) or by talking directly into the camera, in a form of an interview. The latter scenes are either separated from the main narrative (a woman who cannot find a job because she is considered too old), or included in it (salesgirls or hairdressers who stop doing their jobs for a moment, in order to share their stories with the camera). Moreover, the narrative that reconstructs a day in the life of an average housewife in Parisian cités contributes to the film’s realism. The city is directly inscribed in the historical reality because it gives exact dates and political decisions and evokes important events of the period, such as the Vietnam War. Godard openly expresses his hostility towards America, as in the scene in which Juliette and Marianne walk naked in front of their American client with PAN AM and TWA bags on their heads. Several shots later, photos of wounded Vietnamese people alternate in still shots, with a sound of gunshots and Marianne’s voice repeatedly saying ‘America über alles’. Complete rejection of popular culture and contempt for the consumer society can be seen in frequent shots of advertisements, cars, radios or boxes of consumer products (such as washing powders, cigarettes or chewing gums). In the last scene, the boxes are positioned on the grass, at ninety degree angle and filmed from a high angle, which makes them resemble housing blocks of the grands ensembles. Godard’s message is clear: life itself has become ‘a consumable good’. Hence, by equating buildings with machines (in Alphaville) and boxes (in
29 The shot of the inscription on a façade is accompanied by the commentary 'Si par hasard vous n'avez de quoi acheter du LSD, achetez donc la télévision en couleur’. 30 Bergala, Godard au travail, p. 102.
67 Deux ou trois choses), Godard highlights the link between conceived and perceived space and points out that urban planning profoundly influences and sometimes even shapes societies.
Invented and intertextual city
Alphaville resembles other science-fiction cities: like Lang’s Metropolis, it is dystopian and dark. Modern architecture dominates urban landscape with its skyscrapers and high-rise blocks while the society is divided into ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races. Orwell’s influence can be noticed in the disappearance of words (Newspeak in 1984), forbidden emotions, surveillance system or reference to Oceania. Alphaville significantly resembles Film Noir and Expressionist cities, especially in its threatening atmosphere, strong oppositions of light and dark, night scenes and long dark hallways. Moreover, Natasha is compared with vampires from silent films and the real name of Professor Von Braun is Nosferatu (as in the title of Murnau’s Expressionist film),31 which emphasises intertextual aspect of the city. Finally, the character of Lemmy Caution (and the actor Eddie Constantine) is directly transposed from the French B-production adaptations of Peter Cheney’s detective novels, very popular in France at the time. However, he is changed and, to a certain extent, destroyed in Godard’s parody of the gangster film genre.32 By emphasising the fictional aspect of its places and inhabitants (Lemmy also mentions other secret agents called Guy l’Eclair and Dick Tracy), Godard depicted Alphaville not only as a transformed Paris, but also as a cinematic city that reflects and forms part of the film heritage. The conscious nature of filmmaking is further expressed by often leaving out the atmosphere sound, by sudden shifts to negative shots or by accentuated artificial lighting (in the séquence insulaire, Lemmy’s and Natasha’s faces are illuminated respectively, in the rhythm of the poem’s verses). The play with light accentuates the strangeness of the city, where a day can suddenly turn into night and the other way round (as in the séquence insulaire). Moreover, Alphaville’s weirdness is pointed out by a repeated take (from a different angle) of Lemmy entering his room or by sudden illogical appearance of the intruder in Lemmy’s bathroom. Finally, Alphaville greatly illustrates the previously mentioned claim that cinematic cities are primarily invented, since this futuristic city, which could be seen as such even from today’s perspective, was made entirely of fragments of the real Paris in 1965.
31 Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, F. W. Murnau, 1922). 32 This is in particular reflected in Godard’s play with stereotypes, in the sequence where Lemmy unconvincingly fights and runs over a man, in a slow motion.
68 The Paris of Deux ou trois choses resembles its real counterpart more closely and follows ‘natural’ lighting and exchange of night and day. However, its invented side is clearly emphasised by the characters’ awareness of being in a film (they talk to the camera or try to really talk, which, according to them, film characters never do), by Juliette being presented firstly as an actress Marina Vlady and later as a character or by Godard’s frequent reflections (in the voice-over) on the best way of filming a scene or describing an event and mentioning everything that is important. According to Godard, Deux ou trois choses ‘n’est pas un film, c’est une tentative d’un film et qui se présente comme telle’.33 This can be seen in frequent repeated takes of its inhabitants/actors riding on the same avenue twice or crossing the same street several times. Hence, the city itself seems invented, since its coherence, consisting in the fusion of énergie-espace-temps, is by these means constantly broken.
5. LIVED SPACE AND CONCLUDING REMARKS
The films were approved of by the critics (Alphaville in particular), but not so much by a vast audience. This certainly resulted from the fact that Godard dissociated himself from popular culture in these films, either by distorting the image of one of its heroes (Lemmy Caution) or by straightforwardly criticising it in a demanding metafictional film (Deux ou trois choses). However, Alphaville’s impact can best be seen in its various adaptations and in Godard’s sequel, Allemagne année neuf zero (1991), where certain city characteristics were transposed into Berlin in 1990.34 Deux ou trois choses reflected the disappointment with de Gaulle’s politics and, therefore, to an extent, anticipated the protests of May 1968.35 By highlighting the negative sides of the grands ensembles, Godard played the role of one of their severe critics of the period and, consequently, contributed to the decision on prohibiton of their further construction in 1973. These cinematic cities reflect a shift in Godard’s attitude: from an auteur within a group and an individual auteur, the director became an artiste engagé, a critic of urban and social transformations of the period. In Alphaville, the traces of Godard’s New Wave phase and his old fascination with Hollywood can nevertheless be seen in the camera movements (it
33 L'Avant-Scene du Cinéma, No. 70 (May 1967), quoted in: Godard, Godard par Godard: les années Karina, p. 166. 34 A comprehensive study of Alphaville's 'afterlife' is can be found in: Darke, Alphaville, pp. 82-102. 35 The upcoming May 68 events are mostly anticipated in Godard's La Chinoise (1967) in which the theme is the students' revolution.
69 follows the characters), a prevailing continuity editing and references to Film Noir and B- production films. However, political criticism is highly present, although hidden under the mask of an invented city. In Deux ou trois choses, this criticism became more explicit, notably in the documentary approach and the director’s commentaries on de Gaulle’s politics. These changes, as well as the abandonment of continuity editing anticipate Godard’s another radical shift in 1968. Godard’s Paris, therefore, profoundly changed. From an autobiographical and beautiful city, seen through the personal stories of its characters/inhabitants, it became a repulsive and somewhat perverse city, observed from sociological, political and historical points of view. Moreover, it became a theme of these films: its conceived and perceived aspects came into the centre of Godard’s interest, as well as its lived aspect. The latter was expressed through the director’s constant examination of the purpose of cinema and of its power to change space. Godard’s optimism, somewhat absent from these films, can still be seen in his belief that art can produce space and change society. Hence, in Deux ou trois choses, when a girl asks Ivanov if poetry was formative or decorative, this fictional writer replies: ‘Tout ce qui décore la vie est formation’.
70 CONCLUSION
The aim of this dissertation has been to analyse depictions of Paris in four films from Godard’s early phase: A bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, Alphaville and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle. Their differences were taken as a starting point for our analysis, as we attempted to answer the questions how, to what extent and why Godard’s Paris had changed in this short period of eight years (from 1959, when A bout de souffle was filmed, to 1967, when Deux ou trois choses was released) and how these changes correlated with the trends in French cinema and with social, historical and urban transformations of the period. We have started our research by exploring a wide range of cinematic cities throughout film history in order to get an insight in their convergences and different directors’ approaches in filming the cities. We have also examined their similarities by bringing together Deleuze’s film theory on movement-images and time-images and Lefebvre’s sociological approach to space as a fusion of énergie-espace-temps. We have reached the conclusion that cinema and cities are correlated in many ways, such as in the fact that they can only be experienced through time and movement (energy), i.e. through a narrative. Moreover, the aspects of urban space as a product (of a planned strategy) and a producer (of the life of its inhabitants) revealed themselves as applicable to cinematic cities as well. This was confirmed by recent theories that consider cinematic cities not only as a representation of reality, but as a way of inhabiting and changing this reality, which Lefebvre already pointed out through his notion of lived space (the aspect of urban space created by art and its symbols). Finally, both cinematic and real cities are conceived and perceived by, respectively, the urban planner/director and their inhabitants/characters. This complex relationship of cinema and reality has been further examined by focusing on the documentary and invented sides of cinematic cities. We have showed that cinematic cities, despite having significant documentary value (as in Neo-realism), always transform reality and sometimes significantly change it. All cinematic cities are deeply inscribed in their cinematic history, as well as in their socio-historical milieu, which can be particularly seen in the examples of cities in Film Noir or in science-fiction. The analysis of socio-historical and urban circumstances in France and Paris in 1960s has revealed important turbulences and transformations in this period. The country’s great prosperity was accompanied with dissatisfaction of its growing number of young people that culminated in May 1968. The country also underwent a profound urban transformation, with somewhat controversial results that contributed to the general dissatisfaction of this newly born consumer society. This was both followed and provoked by changes in cinema, since the New Wave movement broke with all traditions and imposed a new aesthetics based on depicting reality and emphasising cinema as an art form. Godard’s work was placed on the boundary of these two somewhat contradictory approaches. Interested in showing the things as they are and in enriching his films with documentary value, Godard explored and explicitly highlighted the ‘reality of cinema’. His cinematic cities reflected this ‘clash’, since the director constantly posed the question on their real and invented side and interspersed them in an imaginative and significantly different depictions. As the four analysed films demonstrate, Godard’s cinematic Paris changed in several aspects. 1) From an accentuated setting and a subject of dialogue, the city became a theme of the films and one of its main characters. The perspective changed from personal (‘subjective’, seen from the eyes of the characters and their personal stories) to more historical point of view (‘objective’, seen in the director’s straightforward comments on urban planning policies). Criticism of the city became more obvious in the second two films that dealt with its both conceived and perceived aspects. 2) The choice of places followed this tendency. From the city centre and its appealing monuments, the films gradually moved to the outskirts and finished by portraying monotonous buildings of Parisian suburbs. The city centre remained present but lost its attractive features and was reduced to geometrical lines and its non-lieux. Private places were slowly replaced by public places or lost their essential role as places for intimacy. Hence, the city in general transformed from a beautiful place to a repulsive one. 3) Characters were connected with the city in all the films, but the ties between them changed: whereas in the first two films individuality of the characters was still expressed (through their independence and self-consciousness), the characters gradually lost their identity and became identified with and significantly shaped by their surroundings. 4) Godard’s documentary approach to cities remained constant throughout these films, but its subject and attitude changed: from a positive portrayal of young people, fascination with America and popular culture, the emphasis was put on politics, urban planning and
72 strong criticism on consumer society and America. Conceived space, only mentioned in the first two films, became the subject of the other two films. The invented side of the city was constantly expressed through innovations in style and an emphasised conscious nature of filmmaking. The changes in concept of auteurité (auteur within a group-individual auteur- artiste engagé) can be followed through different aspects of the director’s presence in the film (reflected in, respectively, intertexts on the New Wave films and directors, a more independent camera and finally, a reflexive nature of filmmaking and an important director’s political engagement). Hence, they deeply corresponded to the changes in Paris and France of the period (notably in the growing dissatisfaction with de Gaulle’s and American politics), as well as in cinema (the end of the New Wave movement).
Nevertheless, although changing his attitudes and reflecting his socio-historical and cinematic milieu, Godard’s strong individual mark can be seen in transgressions that these cinematic cities demonstrate. Disappointment, melancholy and criticism of the society are constant, although represented at different levels. Moreover, the director’s shift in attitudes against America and popular culture was obvious in the contents, but not as much in his aesthetics: Alphaville’s streets are based on American Film Noir and the hero, although transformed, pays homage to popular gangster films for mass audience. Despite rejecting it, popular culture remained in the centre of Godard’s interest: in Deux ou trois choses, the colourful consumer products provoke an effect of contrast with the bleak reality, but are also the basis for the film’s visual attractiveness. In Made in U.S.A., which was filmed simultaneously and defined by Godard as the film on both politics and Walt Disney, Godard’s eclecticism can be obviously seen. Finally, continuity editing, the city’s fragmentation and speed in A bout de souffle are still significantly present in Alphaville. On the other hand, Vivre sa vie and Deux ou trois choses are more correspondent in both the theme of prostitution and in break with this classical Hollywood tradition.
The changes in Godard’s depictions of Paris deeply reflect cinematic and social reality, to which he always responded in a subversive way. His embracement of popular culture occurred when it was most rejected in cinema, but once it became the mainstream, Godard became its critic. Despite turning to political and ‘research’ films on cities, film art and its possibilities to change the world remained in the centre of Godard’s interest and a subject for his self-examination as author, expressed through his highly individual and experimental approach. The reasons for change in Godard’s depictions of the city can
73 therefore be found in his double aim: to reflect reality in a subversive way and to change it through experimentation in art. Godard’s influence on cinema was very significant. The films from the 60s are considered as his most successful works, in which many generations of directors found their inspiration. Bernardo Bertolucci and Quentin Tarantino are ones of the many that emphasised Godard’s influence as a basic for their aesthetics. Moreover, as we have shown, Godard’s influence on the real city of the period was proved important, especially in the case of A bout de souffle that produced a sort of revolution in depictions and perception of Paris. Further influences of Godard’s Paris on more recent depictions of cities, as well as on contemporary (perception of) Paris, are yet to be discovered. We are most definitely to see the results from such research.
74
APPENDIX I
FILM STILLS
A bout de souffle: A hand-held camera follows the characters from the eye-level perspective on attractive and moving Champs-Elysées: documentary approach (www.tcf.ua.edu)
A bout de souffle: Cahiers du cinéma, iris-out, a poster of Humphrey Bogart and Poiccard imitating his gesture: Paris as an invented (intertextual) city (www.tcf.ua.edu).
A bout de souffle and Vivre sa vie: Michel and Nana's deaths on the streets of Paris (www.tcf.ua.edu).
Vivre sa vie: Interior with the photograph of the Champs-Elysées: prostutution in the city centre (www.tcf.ua.edu).
Vivre sa vie: Nana in front of the windows, the séquence insulaire and the scene in the hotel room: play between the private and the public (www.tcf.ua.edu).
76 Alphaville's geometrical layout: straight lines (http://www.narrowgauge.info/files/gimgs/85 alphaville6.jpg).
Alphaville's geometrical layout (circles) and a play with dark and light (http://www.narrowgauge.info/files/gimgs/85_alphaville6.jpg and http://www.cinedelica.com/on_the_big_screen/page/4/).
Alphaville: Natasha resisting the city with poetry (www.visionsofthecity.com/alphaville.htm).
77
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle: Juliette Jeanson/Marina Vlady in front of the grand ensemble of La Courneuve: fusion of the character and the city (http://www.oeff.jp/article1791.html).
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle: Non-lieux: highways and construction fields (bthiam.wordpress.com/2009/02/).
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle: Criticism on consumer society and urban planning: boxes as buildings (http://www.criterionconfessions.com/2009/07/2-or-3-things-i-know- about-her-482.html).
78 APPENDIX II
FILMOGRAPHY OF JEAN-LUC GODARD:
THE EARLY PHASE (1955-1967) 1
1955 Opération béton 1956 Une femme coquette 1957 Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (Charlotte et Véronique) 1958 Une histoire d'eau (with François Truffaut) 1958 Charlotte et son Jules 1960 A bout de souffle 1960 Le petit soldat 1961 Une femme est une femme 1962 La paresse (Episode from Sept péchés capitaux) 1962 Vivre sa vie 1963 Le nouveau monde (Episode from ROGOPAG) 1963 Les Carabiniers 1963 Le mépris 1964 Le grand escroc (Episode from Les plus belles escroqueries du monde) 1964 Bande à part 1965 Montparnasse-Levallois (Episode from Paris vu par...) 1964 Une femme mariée 1965 Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution 1965 Pierrot le fou 1966 Masculin Féminin 1966 Made in U.S.A. 1967 Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle 1967 Anticipation ou L'amour en l'an 2000 (Episode from Le plus vieux métier du monde) 1967 Caméra-oeil (Sketch from Loin du Vietnam) 1967 La Chinoise 1967 L'aller et retour andate e ritorno des enfants prodigues dei figli prodighi (Sketch from Vangelo 70) 1967 Week-end
1 Feature films are in bold. Taken from: Alain Bergala, Godard au travail, pp. 380-383.
79 APPENDIX III
FILM CREDITS 1
A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (1960)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard, after the original story of François Truffaut Cinematography: Raoul Coutard Technical advisor: Claude Chabrol Original music: Martial Solal Film editing: Cécile Decugis Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel Poiccard), Jean Seberg (Patricia Franchini), Henri-Jacques Huet (Berrutti), Jean-Pierre Melville (Parvulesco), Liliane David (Liliane), Daniel Boulanger (Police Inspector Vital), Claude Mansard (car seller), Van Doude (journalist), Jean-Luc Godard (An Informer) Richard Balducci (Tolmatchoff), Roger Hanin (Zombach), Gérard Bach (photographer), Michel Fabre (second inspector), André S. Labarthe (interviewer), Jean Herman (soldier), Jean Douchet (passer-by), Jean Domachi (man robbed in the bathroom) Produced by: Georges de Beauregard, S.N.C. Distribution: Imperia Film Length: 90 min. Prix Jean Vigo, 1960.
VIVRE SA VIE (LE FILM EN DOUZE TABLEAUX) (1962)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Screenplay: Suzanne Schiffman Cinematography: Raoul Coutard Original music: Michel Legrand Song: Jean Ferrat
1 From: Bergala, Godard au travail, pp. 381-383 and www.imdb.com, accessed on: 5 October 2009. Cast: Anna Karina (Nana), Sady Rebbot (Raoul), André S. Labarthe (Paul), Guylaine Schlumberger (Yvette) Gérard Hoffman (man who buys Nana), Monique Messine (Elisabeth), Paul Pavel (journalist), Dimitri Dineff (Dimitri), Peter Kassovitz (the young man), Eric Schlumberger (Luigi), Brice Parain (himself), Henri Attal (Arthur), Gilles Quéant (the first client), Odile Geoffroy (barmaid), Marcel Charton (policeman), Jack Florency (man in the cinema) Produced by: Pierre Braunberger (Films de la Pléiade) Distribution: Panthéon - Distribution Length: 90 min Special Jury Award and Italian Critic Award, Venice 1962.
ALPHAVILLE (UNE ETRANGE AVENTURE DE LEMMY CAUTION) (1965)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard Cinematography: Raoul Coutard Sound: René Levert Original music: Paul Mizraki Film editing: Agnès Guillemot Cast: Eddie Constantine (Lemmy Caution), Anna Karina (Natasha von Braun), Akim Tamiroff (Henry Dickson), Jean-Louis Comolli (Prof. Jeckell), Michel Delahaye (von Braun's assistant), Jean-André Fieschi (Prof. Heckell) Christa Lang (seductress), László Szabó (Chief Engineer), Howard Vernon (Prof. Leonard Nosferatu aka von Braun), Alpha 60. Produced by: André Michelin, Chaumiane Prod. – Filmstudio (Rome) Distribution: Athos Films Length: 98 min.
DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D’ELLE (1967)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard, after Catherine Vimenet’s article published in Le Nouvel Observateur. Cinematography: Raoul Coutard (Techniscope and Eastmancolor) Cameraman: Georges Liron
81 Costumes: Gitt Magrini Assistants: Charles L. Bitsch, Isabelle Pons, Robert Chevassu Sound: René Levert Film editing: Françoise Colin Cast: Marina Vlady (Juliette Jeanson), Joseph Gehrard (Monsieur Gérard), Anny Duperey (Marianne), Roger Montsoret (Robert Jeanson), Raoul Lévy (the American), Jean Narboni (Roger), Yves Beneyton (young man), Juliette Berto (girl talking to Robert), Helena Bielinic (girl in a bath), Christophe Bourseiller (Christophe), Marie Bourseiller (Solange), Anna Manga (woman in the basement), Robert Chevassu (meter reader), Blandine Jeanson (girl), Benjamin Jules-Rosette (man in basement), Jean-Pierre Laverne (Ivanov) Jean-Patrick Lebel (Pécuchet), Claude Miller (Bouvard), Helen Scott (girl playing pinball) Produced by: Philippe Senné, Anouschka Films, Argos Films, les Films du Carosse, Parc Film, 1966. Distribution: U.G.C., Films Sirius, C.F.D.C. Length: 120 min
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HUBBARD, Phil, KITCHIN, Rob, VALENTINE, Gill (ed.), Key Thinkers on Space and Place (London; Thousand Oaks ; New Delhi : Sage, 2004).
JOUSSE, Thierry, ‘Des villes et des films’, JOUSSE, Thierry, PAQUOT, Thierry (ed.), La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), pp. 9-11.
______, ‘Paris étranger’, JOUSSE, T., PAQUOT, T. (ed.), La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), pp. 535-539.
KEILLER, Patrick, ‘Architectural Cinematography’, in: RATTENBURY, Kester (ed.), This Is Not Architecture (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 37-43.
84 ______, 'Phantom Rides', in The Guardian, 10 Nov. 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian, accessed on: 19 March 2009.
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______, ‘Cinéphilie’, JOUSSE, T., PAQUOT, T. (ed.), La ville au cinéma: Encyclopédie (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005), pp. 59-63.
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History, Urbanism, Sociology
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85 LERNER, R.E., MEACHAM, S., MCNALL BURNS, E., Western Civilizations (New York/London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1988), pp. 749-782, 846-874.
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Godard and New Wave
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86
GODARD, Jean-Luc, Godard par Godard : les années Karina (1960 à 1967) (Paris: Flammarion, 1990).
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87 FILMOGRAPHY
PRIMARY CORPUS
A bout de souffle (1960)
Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967)
Vivre sa vie (1962)
SECONDARY CORPUS (SELECTED FILMS)
Jean-Luc Godard’s films 1955-1967 (see: Appendix II)
L’arrivée d’un train à la Ciotat (Lumières, 1896)
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, Walter Ruttmann, 1927)
Antoine et Colette (François Truffaut, 1962)
Bicycle thieves (Ladri di biciclette, Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
Cinéastes de notre temps, Le dinosaure et le bébé, dialogue en huit parties entre Fritz Lang et Jean-Luc Godard (1967)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959)
Et dieu créa la femme (Roger Vadim, 1956)
Germany, Year Zero (Germania, anno zero, Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
The Man with a movie camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom, Dziga Vertov, 1929)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)
Paris nous appartient (Jacques Rivette, 1961)
Les quatre cent coups (François Truffaut, 1959)
Paris vu par… (1965): Montparnasse-Levallois (J.-L. Godard), Gare du Nord (J. Rouch), Place de l'Etoile (E. Rohmer), Saint-Germain des Prés (J. Douchet), Rue Saint-Denis (J.-D. Pollet) and La Muette (C. Chabrol)
Rome, Open City (Roma, città aperta, Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008)
La sortie des usines Lumière (Lumières, 1895)
Triumph of the Will (Triumf des Willens, Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
89