France
Jean-Luc Godard
Originally commissioned by Canal Plus, Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema is a project that seems always to have been latent in the director's work. From his days as a critic on Cahiers du cinema and his profligate citation of the nouvelle vague films, Godard has always sought to examine the history of cinema and its relation to the other arts.
Histoire(s), of which these are another two instalments in a proposed series of ten, originates from a series of lectures Godard gave in 1977 in Montreal. He later collected them in a book, Introduction a une veritable histoire du cinema, in which he wrote that such a history, in order to be "true" must be made of "pictures and sounds, not of illustrated texts."
The method of the lectures - associating, juxtaposing, and synthesising his own films with others - is carried over into the present work and elaborated by reference to painting, newsreel and television. In short, this is "Dr Godard's True History of the Image", but a history decisively through cinema.
In terms of technique, tone and technology, Histoire(s) is another chapter in what the great French critic Serge Daney called "Godardian pedagogy", and one that has been thoroughly marked by its engagement with video. But these programmes, while they continue the hybridisation of media begun with Ici et ailleurs (1974), have less in common with the sense of impotence and despair that clouded Numero deux (1975) than with the creative and conceptual liberation demonstrated to dazzling effect in Scenario du film passion (1982).
Godard recently expressed a sense of liberation about the work of the Histoire(s) series. "For me, if I haven't had more commercial success it's because I was never really sure whether I was writing a novel or an essay. I love both but now, with Histoire(s) du cinema, I'm certain it's an essay. It's easier for me and better that way."
Chris Darke
Prod co: Gaumont Dir, sc and
ed: Jean-Luc Godard
Running times: 26 mins
per episode