Godard's In Praise of Love

[Johann]

I've been watching In Praise of Love over and over again since I saw it on the big screen at the Pacific Cinematheque.

I immediately bought the vhs and I've been going over it like the dead sea scrolls ever since. I feel Godard is way ahead of everybody (like Kubrick was) but I don't know where to point in terms of his "advanced art".

I can say the film has stunning images. Pristine compositions, deep DEEP focus. The colors Godard uses are rationed: these are precious hues- no waste.

Everytime I watch it I get a profound feeling that I am watching something incredibly important. But don't ask me to tell you how or why. That's the Godard enigma at work. I've been reluctant to call him a film poet but In Praise of Love is as clear a film poem as you'll find. He's over 70 years old,and like Kubrick, he hasn't lost any of his talent.

Film Comment's Amy Taubin said it best: "It has the internal intricacy, precision, and above all the tenderness of a late Beethoven chamberwork"

Anyone who wants to discuss, I'm ready and willing...

[oscar jubis]

I cherish any opportunity to watch a Godard film. Few, if any, of his films from the past twenty years has received much distribution. Watching In Praise of Love one has to conclude that Godard continues to occupy the vanguard of cinema, experimenting with form and content while tackling weighty issues obliquely.

The film is divided in two parts. One film, another video. One b&w, the other in color. The film is certainly a poem, as stated by Johann_ scenes of nightime Paris, Edgar attentively inspecting the blank pages of a book. In Praise of Love is also a film essay crammed with all sorts of ideas regarding the arc of relationships (meeting, passion, separation, rediscovery), the meaning of love at three stages of human development (youth, adulthood, old age), the place of art in preserving our memories; the place of history in politics, etc.

Godard's enigmatic, oblique style ticks people off. It draws me in, and forces me to look closer. The repetitive inter-titles. The layered soundtrack (at times you hear two conversations or two commentators at the same time). Scenes that end a bit too early or that feature off-screen speakers. Pointed jabs at Hollywood and the "United States of North America". Digressions into something seemingly unrelated to the previous scene.
I should have just bought the tape like you, J. I've already rented it twice. I can't seem to get enough. I've defended Godard in these forums from the usual charges of being pretentious and elitist and I won't do it again. To each his own.

[Johann]

Oscar, your views are always on the money.

In Praise was given one star by Ebert. He was outraged at Godard's swipes at Hollywood and Spielberg.
Myself, I didn't really notice it until I read his review.

I'm drawn in to the film as well- there is a lot to think about here.
Godard refers to everything from the origins of the Bois de Boulonge to Lichenstein to Bresson.

The film shifts from eye-grabbing black and white to eye-grabbing digital color when our "searching man" picks a book.
It's a fascinating idea: a man who had an unforgettable chance encounter with a woman seeks her out for a play and finds out she's dead.

His life is altered forever. He tries to remember what it was like at that first meeting. The last scene on the train is so enigmatic and profound! It drives home the mantra Godard repeats in the film: "When I think of something, I must think of something else", not to mention:The measure of love is to love without measure. That shit is right up my alley, Jean-Luc.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Johann
In Praise was given one star by Ebert. He was outraged at Godard's swipes at Hollywood and Spielberg.
Myself, I didn't really notice it until I read his review.

Ebert spends two thirds of the review defending Hollywood and Spielberg and says the anti-American comments are "silly". He congratulates himself for publicly changing his mind about a film he hailed at Cannes. There's not even a shadow of an attempt at describing the experience of watching the film, much less an analysis of its themes, ideas and stories.

I'm drawn in to the film as well- there is a lot to think about here.

Including more story, if not "plot", than initially apparent. Take for instance the story of Jean Lacouture, the grandfather and resistance fighter who turned in, apparently under duress, the woman he would marry at the end of the war, upon her liberation from a concentration camp! . Lacouture and his wife have sold their memoirs to a Hollywood company, planning to cast Juliet Binoche as the young mademoiselle Bayard. We can imagine easily how Hollywood would transform their memories, and more importantly: how their history is to be preserved, into a product built for maximum profit. Godard is concerned with the ethics and the implications of these transactions. What happens when an American corporation has the power to disseminate their own interpretation of history, using increasingly more sophisticated thus effective technology.


Godard refers to everything from the origins of the Bois de Boulonge to Lichenstein to Bresson.

It's not whether man will endure but whether man has a right to endure

There can be no peace without justice. There can be no resistance without memory

How can the Church bequeath to the meek, the legitimate heirs of God, a kingdom not of this world?

Every thought should recall the debris of a smile

There's an excellent quote in which Bresson advised film directors to: "Be sure to exhaust what can be communicated by stillness and silence"

The film shifts from eye-grabbing black and white to eye-grabbing digital color when our "searching man" picks a book.

"Searching man" is such a perfect description of Edgar. Godard's main complaint about contemporary man might be that we've stopped seaching, asking the crucial questions. We have replaced history with technology. We don't quite live, we merely exist, he argues.
Notice that the book he picks is called "Le Voyage d'Edgar".

It's a fascinating idea: a man who had an unforgettable chance encounter with a woman seeks her out for a play and finds out she's dead.

More specifically, her grandfather tells us, she commited suicide in Amsterdam, and that she had kept a secret: she had acquired TB. Godard gives the young woman an aura of mystery by keeping her face hidden, even during scenes where she speaks several lines of dialogue.


His life is altered forever. He tries to remember what it was like at that first meeting.

Putting Edgar in the position of the resistance fighters, and the old man in the first part of the film who's trying to recover the paintings that belonged to his family before WWII. They're all reclaiming their past, so to speak.

If anyone says JLG is a cold intellectual, I'd show him the scene where the old Ms. Bayard weeps silently, after failing to explain to her granddaughter why she didn't reclaim her surname "Samuel" after liberation, choosing to keep the Catholic surname "Bayard".

[Johann]

Huge thanks for your last post oscar. You've added a heavyweight. You might inspire someone to really look at this film.

Godard says everything has meaning in the film. I'm still working hard at deciphering it all. I know it has meaning, I can feel it, but I'm lacking the ability to pick up all of the cultural and political subtexts.

You've helped me in understanding it more, oscar. Godard wonders where we should place our priorites and I don't blame him. His deep concern for the film medium is front and center (it's past and future are beautifully juxtaposed in a shot where we see two film posters: Bresson's Pickpocket and The Matrix). It's almost like he's an old monarch wondering who he will give the keys to the kingdom. Technology is threatening...

You are absolutely right that Jean-Luc is occupying the vanguard of cinema and Ebert is way out of line. Roger takes a position that totally ignores the other ideas in the film: love, relationships, history, emotions. Are Hollywood and Spielberg more important than these things?

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Johann
Godard says everything has meaning in the film. I'm still working hard at deciphering it all. I know it has meaning, I can feel it, but I'm lacking the ability to pick up all of the cultural and political subtexts.

Godard sets one on a search for meaning that becomes increasingly satifying, once you tap into its rhythms and become aware of thematic connections. For instance, I suscribe to comments I read in Sight and Sound about a major analogy being made by Godard between resistance to the occupation of France by Nazi Germany and resistance to Hollywood's monopoly and cultural imperialism.
A personal observation I find significant is that both scenes in the banks of the Seine, one in each half, are key. One is visibly taking place across the river from the ruins of an abandoned Renault plant, where apparently major events in the history of the Union movement took place. I love the scene where Berthe and Edgar talk but the camera stays at medium distance and the couple are only seen from behind. The song from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante is briefly overheard at one point, lending added poignancy.

You've helped me in understanding it more, oscar.

The learning (and searching) are happening at both ends, mon ami.

Godard wonders where we should place our priorites. His deep concern for the film medium is front and center (it's past and future are beautifully juxtaposed in a shot where we see two film posters: Bresson's Pickpocket and The Matrix). It's almost like he's an old monarch wondering who he will give the keys to the kingdom.

I think Godard hints that the keys belong to people like Samira Mahkmalbaf, who wrote and directed The Apple when she was seventeen. That film's poster is featured prominently in a subsequent scene. It might be intended as an alternative to New Wave nostalgia and crass Hollywood product.

You are absolutely right that Jean-Luc is occupying the vanguard of cinema.

Jean Luc Godard films are like grains of sand in the oyster of the moviegoer's mind: they irritate, they produce pearls.

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer