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Jean-Luc Godard and the Other History of Cinema by Douglas Morrey A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French Studies University of Warwick, Department of French Studies August 2002 Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Splendeurs et miseres 1.1: Toutes les histoires — Mon beau souci: Cinema and seduction — Histoire de la nuit — Usine(s) de reves 16 1.2: La fin du four: Cinema and war — La grande illusion: Representation and reality — To be or not to be: Image and absence — Amere victoire 37 Chapter 2: Matiere et memoire 2.1: A la recherche du siècle perdu: Godard's century of cinema— En train de se faire: Cinema and modernity —Illusions perdues: The Fall of cinema 61 2.2: Scientia sexual is: Pornography and technology — Machines of war, war of machines — La croisee des destins — Brief encounters: History as constellation — Terminus 80 Chapter 3: Les Mains sales 3.1: Plus ca change: Godard and the Balkans — Universal pictures: From the Hollywood brand to CNN — Le mode du systeme: Television and terror — Godard bataille Darty 110 3.2: Vaguely new — Voyage au bout de la nuit: Alphaville — Dark victory: Allemagne neuf zero — To have and have not: Nouvelle Vague —Nous sommes tous encore ici 134 Chapter 4: Mod a credit 4.1: Abii ne viderem: Voice and music in 4A — Parallel tracks: Reading Godard with Derrida (and vice versa) — Devoirs d'auteur: Cinema and citation — Ce qui reste d'Hitchcock 166 4.2: I am Legend: Godard and the autoportrait — Night on Earth: The Apocalypse according to Jean-Luc — Histo ire de la resistance/Resistance de l'histoire: Eloge de l'amour 195 Conclusion 232 Bibliography 237 Filmography 263 Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to the following individuals and institutions for the assistance they have provided in the realisation of this project:- The Arts and Humanities Research Board, for the generous provision of financial support which made this research possible; The Department of French Studies at the University of Warwick, where I must long since have outstayed my welcome; Professor Leslie Hill, who has been more than a supervisor to me: a model of intellectual probity and academic humility; My fellow Godard scholars, Steve Cannon, Mike Witt, Michael Temple, James Williams, Roland-Francois Lack and Nicole Brenez, for their material and moral support; And the friends and family up and down the country who have provided me with so many opportunities to escape over the past three years. This work is for Rachel... ... et pour moi-merne. DM, August 2002. Declaration I confirm that the material in this thesis represents my own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Abstract Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998) is a video work made up of visual and verbal quotations of hundreds of images and sounds from film history. But rather than simply telling (hi)stories of cinema, Godard makes a case for cinema as a tool for performing the work of history. This is partly because the film image, by virtue of always recording more of the real than was anticipated or intended, necessarily has history itself inscribed within its very fabric. It is also because montage, as the art of combining discrete elements in new ways in order to produce original forms, can be seen as a machine for realising historical thought. This thesis examines these ideas by discussing Godard's account of the role of cinema in the Second World War, and by analysing some of his recent work as examples of historical montage which attempt to criticise our current political climate through comparison with earlier eras. After a first chapter which sets out Godard's argument through an extensive commentary of Histoire(s) 1A and B, a second chapter discusses Godard's depiction of the invention of cinema and traces a complex argument about technology and historical responsibility around the key metaphorical figure of the train. Chapter 3 explores the ways in which Godard's historical approach to cinema allows him to maintain a critical discourse with regard to the geopolitical realities of late twentieth-century Europe (Germany, the Balkans), but also to the communications and business empires that have developed over the past few decades. A final chapter offers a detailed consideration of the nature of Godard's cinematic quotation and seeks to explicate the apocalyptic rhetoric of his late work. Aside from Histoire(s) du cinema, films discussed include Nouvelle Vague (1990), Allemagne neuf zero (1991), For Ever Mozart (1996) and Eloge de l'amour (2001). Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon Tout ce qui est interessant se passe dans l'ombre decidement. On ne sait rien de la veritable histoire des hommes. Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit und wozu Dichter in dikftiger Zeit? 1-161derlin, Trot und Wein' 1 Introduction 'On est là pour apprendre ou pour apprendre une sorte de methodologie, pas fixe, mais des methodes et des moyens d'approcher le cinema ou la maniere dont on le fait, de maniere peut-etre utile, de maniere qu'on tie se plaigne pas simplement.' - Godard, Introduction a une veritable histoire du cinema' Histoire(s) du cinema is an eight-part video work about film history which is put together principally out of the images and sounds of cinema itself. The work was first made commercially available in France in the autumn of 1998 although the project has a long history in Godard's career. The idea for a project about the history of cinema, to be made on film and video, was originally conceived by Godard and Henri Langlois in December 1976 with the intention of raising money to help continue to fund Langlois's ailing Cinematheque Francaise. Unfortunately, Langlois died in January 1977, although an implicit recognition of his role in the genesis of Histoire(s) du cinema comes in Godard's reverent homage to the father of the Cinematheque in chapter 3B of the work. Then, in 1978, Godard took Langlois's place delivering a series of lectures on film history at the Conservatoire d'art cinematographique in Montreal. In each session, Godard would project one of his own films in conjunction with another from the history of cinema before improvising a discourse around the films which was later transcribed and published as Introduction a une veritable histoire du cinema. This comparativist methodology, but also the autobiographical approach to film history are features that would be retained in Histoire(s) du cinema, as we shall see. 1 Jean-Luc Godard, Introduction a une veritable histoire du cinema (Paris: Albatros, 1980), p. 261. 2 Godard began work on Histoire(s) du cinema in the mid- to late-eighties2 and early versions of the project were screened on Canal Plus in France and Channel 4 in the UK at the end of that decade. The final version of the Histoire(s) was made available to the public in 1998 as a boxed set of four video cassettes with a total running time of 265 minutes, divided into eight (or four times two) chapters of unequal length. The finished product was also shown on Canal Plus over eight weeks in the summer of 1999. In addition, the videos were accompanied by a set of four art books, published by Gallimard 3, containing still images from the film together with the (almost) complete text which is spoken by Godard and others in the work. Furthermore, the complete soundtrack to the film has since been made available on a five-CD set by the German avant-garde music label ECM. Thus, although Histoire(s) du cinema did not have a theatrical release, its appearance was nevertheless something of a multi-media event (at least in France: the work is as yet unavailable in the UK and no subtitled version of the complete series of films has been produced. The versions of the two first episodes shown on Channel 4 were subtitled). The arrival of Histoire(s) du cinema marked a revival of interest in the work of a filmmaker who had sunk into relative critical and commercial obscurity, at least outside France, since the mid-1980s. The three years since the appearance of the Histoire(s) have thus seen the re-release, in Britain, of some of Godard's early-sixties works, Bande part (1964, re-released in 2001) and Vivre sa vie (1962, re-released in 2002), as well as the revival, in France, of the previously undistributed King Lear (1987, released in France in 2002). This renewal of Godard's reputation was further consolidated by the completion of tioge de l'amour, released to critical acclaim 2 The accepted dates for Histoire(s) du cinema have now been set at 1988-1998 although Jacques Aumont argues that Godard began work on the Histoire(s) around 1986. See Amnósies: Fictions du cinema d'apres Jean-Luc Godard (Paris: P.O.L., 1999), p. 11. Meanwhile, Michael Temple and James S.