By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

Countdown To Cannes: Jean-Luc Godard

d1095a57-21c3-466d-9aae-c40d0dee4780-800x600The tenth in a series of snapshots outlining the nineteen directors in the 67th Palme d’Or Competition.

Background: French-Swiss; born Paris, France 1930.

Known for / style: Breathless (1960), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Alphaville (1965); Film Socialisme (2010); a founding member of the nouvelle vague; accomplished film criticism in addition to screenwriting; an incredibly prolific output that has moved on from narrative filmmaking and transitioned more into experimental documents, short films, and video commentaries on art, life, and love; a blatant dismissal of institutions and traditions; elliptical editing; avant-garde tendencies; politically and philosophically-charged cinema.

jlgNotable accolades: Cannes is one of the only major festivals that hasn’t presented one of the original modern auteurs with a prize—not that Godard thinks twice about this, mind you. At the top of his awards shelf are his two Golden Lions from Venice (a career award and one for Prénom Carmen, 1983), the Golden Bear from Berlin (Alphaville), and an honorary Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards. In true Godardian fashion, he was not present for that award.

Previous Cannes appearances: Godard has attended the Festival for over five decades. He began his journeys there acting in the Agnès Varda Competition title Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), later bringing his films to parallel sections (Vent d’Est, 1970; Comment ca va, 1976; Ici et Ailleurs, 1977) and then finally in Competiton (Sauve qui Peut / La Vie, 1980; Passion, 1982; Détective, 1985; Aria, 1987; Nouvelle Vague, 1990; Eloge de L’amour, 2001). He’s also played Un Certain Regard a number of times, including Lettre a Freddy Buache (1982), Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1997), and Film Socialisme (2010). Out of Competiton, he’s premiered Histoires du Cinéma (1988) and Notre Musique (2004). Cannes’ Classics program has also showed a few selections from his catalogue. Godard will also be bringing a Special Screening of his 2014 documentary Bridges of Sarajevo to the Croisette.

fd77063f-a6b8-4da4-83d7-72683badccef-800x600Film he’s bringing to Cannes: Adieu au Langage 3D (Goodbye to Language), an expectedly experimental film shot natively in 3D. The newly-released trailer features a Godardian aesthetic most recently seen in Film Socialisme (2010), including white text overlays, ambiguous storytelling, video and handheld camerawork, and avant-garde color palettes. The synopsis, found on the distributor’s website: “The idea is simple: A married woman and a single man meet. They love, they argue, fists fly. A dog strays between town and country. The seasons pass. The man and woman meet again. The dog finds itself between them. The other is in one, the one is in the other.”



Could it win the Palme? Godard hasn’t won anything from Cannes, and he certainly doesn’t care either way: he’s already far more canonized than some current Palme d’Or owners, which is to say awards are technically irrelevant. That’s not to say he couldn’t win the top prize in 2014, but we’ll have to see if he even shows up to the Festival in the first place. Goodbye to Language might seem impenetrable or an otherwise difficult sit, but the jury has some notably excellent fans of video that may enjoy Godard’s latest (Jia Zhangke, for one). A career Palme d’Or, if anything, seems the most likely.

Why you should care: Godard hasn’t screened in Competition in over a decade, and many of the filmmakers he’ll be competing against were inspired by his work. While he was hilariously absent for his scheduled Film Socialisme appearance, you can be sure that if he does attend Cannes 2014, the press conference for Goodbye to Language will be assuredly great: Godard will smoke his cigarettes, answer questions with brutal honesty, and act as if none of this matters at all. If nothing else, expect his latest film to be an interesting commentary on rhetoric and the mode of 3D-filmmaking.

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Follow Jake Howell on Twitter: @Jake_Howell

Previous Entries:

Tommy Lee Jones

Atom Egoyan

Bennett Miller

Xavier Dolan

David Cronenberg

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Naomi Kawase

Ken Loach

Michel Hazanavicius

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon