31 Jean-Luc Godard: 'Struggling on

Two Fronts': Godard in interview

with Jacques Bontemps, Jean-Louis
Comolli, Michel Oelahaye, Jean
Narboni (extracts)1

(,Lutter sur deux fronts: conversation avec

Jean-Luc Godard', Cahiers du Cinema 194,
October 1967)

In La Chinoise cinema takes on many aspects and they could even be contradictory ...
The thing is, I once had lots of ideas about cinema, now I have none at
all. I stopped knowing what cinema was as soon as I made my second
film. The more you make films the more you realize that you're either
working along with received ideas, or you're working against them _
which almost comes to the same. That's why I think it's criminal that
someone like Moullet isn't given Les AverIturiers or Deux billets pour Mexic02
to make. It's criminal too that Rivette, like a lot of people before him (all
victims of the gestapo run by the economic-aesthetic structures which the
Holy Alliance of producers-distributors-exhibitors has set up) is cutting a
five-hour film down to the sacrosanct hour and a half.:'
[. . .]
But you're saying that it's necessary to go 011 makillg ft'lms all the same.
Yes, of course, and that's where all the tension is. You want to make films
that are different, and you have to make them with people you despise,
people you don't even want to see, instead of making them with the
people you like and spend your time with. The whole infrastructure is
rotten - from the lab stage to the point where the film, if it's lucky, reaches
the audience. Of course, there are times when something happens. Hyeres
for instance is preferable to Cannes - not ideal, but still better. And
Montreal is better than Venice. 4 You have to keep pushing ahead. The
Canadian cinema is interesting as an example. The National Film Board
is an impressive film factory, more so than Hollywood today. It's a great
set-up. But what's the pay-off? Zero. There's nothing to see for it. The films
just aren't coming out. What Daniel Johnson" ought to do is nationalize aU
the cinemas in Quebec. But he won't do it. The best he's capable of is
seeing that De Gaulle gets a welcome on the Metro screens. So, over there
as well, cinema is subject to a special brand of imperialism, just like
everywhere else. Those of us who are trying to make films in a different
way ought to be the fifth column trying to bring the system down.

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But there is already a particular cinema operating outside the system . ..

Yes, of course. Bertolucci isn't making American cinema, neither are
Resnais, Straub, Rossellini or Jerry Lewis. But that other cinema, whether
good or bad, represents one ten-thousandth, or even one hundred-thou-
sandth of what's being made.
But is there still real/lJ an American cinema?
No. There isn't an American cinema any more. There's a phoney cinema
calling itself American, but it's only a poor shadow of what American
cinema was once.
Are you goil1g to work for an American company again?
f· If that's the way I get to make films, I don't ask for anything better. Or if
!-:
I',..
I .. it gives me the chance to shoot an expensive film, Mickie the Circus Dog,
r·.
say, where more money goes into the image than into the pockets of the
stars. But that in no way contradicts my views on America and the imperi-
alist policies of the major companies. First, because there are Americans
;,-.
and Americans. Then, because America also needs a fifth column and the
American companies need to be given the idea of making a different kind
of cinema, and the will to make it. Given one success, for example, you
can change the system gradually. But it's hard work and you run up
against imperialism physically, at every level of production and distri-
bution. All the same, you have to stay optimistic. People can change. And
something's begun to move in America. You see it in the Blacks, and
in the opposition to the Vietnam war. Where cinema is concerned, the
universities are beginning to distribute films and their circuits are fantastic.
New companies are being formed. I sold La Chinoise to Leacock. 6 But
anyway, there's more to the world than America, and I would lump the
Americans and the Russians together because their systems are more or
less identical. In both places young film-makers are victimized. In America
it's got to the point where there are no young film-makers. All the Amer-
ican film-makers we admire came into the cinema young. Now they're old
but no one's taking their place. When Hawks started out he was the same
age as Goldman 7 and Goldman is alone. Of course Hollywood still gets
the young coming in but they aren't bringing with them the equivalent in
ideas that, let's say, Hawks did once. They're shaped by structures which
have become decadent and they haven't dared to blow them up. They
aren't born free into cinema. Nor are they born into poverty, aesthetic or
otherwise. They're neither the explorers nor the poets of the cinematic
enterprise any more. Whereas all those who made Hollywood what it was
were poets, brigands almost, who took over Hollywood by force and made
it accept their own poetic laws. The bravest at the moment, the only one
who's come out of it, is Jerry Lewis. He's the only one in Hollywood
doing something different, the only one who isn't falling in with the
established categories, the norms, the principles. That's exactly how Hitch-
cock was for a long time. Lewis is the only one today who's making
courageous films. And I think he's perfectly well aware of it. He's been
able to do it because of his personal genius. But who else is there? Nicholas

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Ray is absolutely typical of the situation American cinema is in. The really
sad thing is that all those film-makers who couldn't hold out, who've
stuffed themselves silly with the good things, are now bumming their
way round the world at large. The better part of the American cinema has
become what Nicholas Ray has become. As for the New Yorkers, they're
hardly more encouraging. They've buried themselves already and they
want to burrow down even further with their 'underground' cinema, for
no good reason. If the Russians aren't helping Hanoi bombard New York,
what's the point in going underground?
There will be other great American film-makers (there's already
Goldman, [Shirley] Clarke and Cassavetes). We have to wait for that, and
to help and encourage them. I mentioned the universities a minute ago -
there you've got, or you're beginning to get, cinema in a place which had
none at all before. That's the important thing. The cinema has to go
everywhere. What we need to do is draw up a list of places where it
doesn't exist yet and tell ourselves - that's where we have to go. If it isn't
in the factories, we have to take it there. If it isn't in the universities, we
have to go into the universities. If it isn't in the brothels, we have to go
into the brothels. Cinema has to leave the places where it does exist and
go into places where it doesn't.
You mean that from the outset, in its very existence, cinema has a political
dimension . ..
Always. In earlier days that political dimension was unconscious, now it
is tending to become conscious, or let's say that people are trying to
discover the language of that unconscious.
[. . .]
,'.1

Your short film Anticipation conveys the impression of a desire to destroy the
image itself as a prop of realism . . .8 '" ,,'-"

The annoying thing is that the actors are so recognizable. But at the start
I had no ideas of this kind. Then I got the idea of giving the film what
you might call a 'biological' side, turning it into something like a flow of
plasma, but plasma that said something.
In doing that you touched something virtually sacred - the precise, clear and full
cinematographic image.
But the image is always an image from the moment it's screened. In fact
I didn't destroy anything at all. Or rather, I only destroyed a particular
idea of the image, a particular way of envisaging what it ought to be. But
I never thought that through in terms of destruction .... What I wanted
was to pass across to the inside of the image, since most films are made
on the outside of the image. What is the image itself supposed to be? A
reflection. Does the reflection in a pane of glass have a depth of some
kind? UsuaHy in cinema you remain outside the reflection, external to it.
What I wanted was to see the other side of the image, like being behind
the screen rather than in front of it. Instead of being behind the real screen
you were behind the image and in front of the screen. Or rather, inside
the image. Just as certain paintings give you the sense that you're inside

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them, or that as long as you are on the outside you don't understand
them. In The Red Desert I had the sense that the colours were inside the
camera, not in front of it. With Le Mepris, on the contrary, I had the sense
that the colours were in front of the camera. You really do get the feeling
with The Red Desert that it's the camera which has manufactured the film.
With Le Mepris there was on the one hand the instrument, and on the
other the objects outside it. But I don't think I know how to manufacture
a film like that [like The Red Desert]. Except that maybe I am beginning to
be tempted to try something of the sort. Made in USA was the first sign
of that temptation. That's why it wasn't understood; the audience watched
it as if it were a representational film, whereas it was something else. Of
course they lost out because they were trying to follow a representation,
they tried to understand what was going on. Actually they did understand
without any trouble, but without knowing that they did and thinking on
the contrary that they were failing to understand. What struck me for
example is that Demy likes Made in USA a lot, and I've always thought of
it as a film that's 'sung' by comparison with La Chinoise which is a 'talkie'.
Made il1 USA most resembles Les Parapluies de Cherbourg as a film. The
people in it may not sing, but the film does. 9
While on the subject of cross-referel1ces, do you not see some link between Persona
and your most recellt films?
No, I don't think so. Anyway, I don't think Bergman likes my films very
much. I don't believe he takes the smallest thing from me or anyone else.
And after Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence, Persona was
really the only film he could make.
Persona does have more stylistically bold features by comparison with his previous
films - like the duplication of the speech, for instance.
I don't think so. I think the narrative level is the aesthetic sequel or
deepening of the long take of Ingrid Thulin in Winter Light when she
makes her confession. But it's more striking in Persona, almost an assault
at the formal level. It hits you as a process, to the point where you're
tempted to say, 'That's fantastic, I've got to use it in one of my films'.
That's how I got the idea for the first shot of my next film, after re-
seeing Persona. I said to myself: what's needed is a static shot of people
talking about their sexuality. But in a sense for me that relates back to the
first shot of Vivre sa vie where I stayed behind the couple, whereas I could
have overtaken them to view them from the front. It's also more or less
what corresponds to the interviews in my films. In Bergman it's very
different, but what you come back to in the end is always the desire to
~onvey a dialogue. And with that you also get back to Beckett. lance
Intended to make a film of Happy Days. I never did because they wanted
me to take on Madeleine Renaud whereas I wanted to use young actors.
I'd have liked to do it because I had a text and all I needed to do was film
it. 1'd have had just a single tracking shot beginning in long shot and
ending in close-up. It would have started at precisely the distance
necessary to bring me into close shot in an hour and a half, to end on the

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 Towards a New Cinema/New Criticism

last sentence. It was just a matter of elementary arithmetic, a simple

calculation of speed in relation to time.
But how do you see all the things in Persona which remind you of the fact that
you are watching a film?
I didn't understand anything in Persona. Absolutely anything. I watched
it carefully and this is how I saw things: Bibi Andersson is the one who
is ill and the other woman is her nurse. In the end I always believe in
'realism'. So when the husband thinks he recognizes his wife, as far as I
am concerned, since he's recognized her, it really is her. I mean if you
didn't base yourself on realism you wouldn't be able to do anything any
more, you couldn't even step into a taxi in the street, always assuming
you dared to go out in the first place. But I believe everything. It isn't
about two separate things - one 'real' and the other a 'dream'. It's all just
one thing. Belle de jour is fantastic. And at certain points it's the same as
with Persona. You say to yourself, 'Right, from here on I'm really going
to concentrate so I know exactly what's going on', And then suddenly
... you say, 'Shit! There you go! ... ' and you realize you've gone back
again.
It's like trying to force yourself to stay awake so as to be in on the
moment when you drop off to sleep.
For a long time now Bergman has been at the stage where the film is
created by the camera, suppressing anything that's not the image. That
should be one of the axioms you start out from for the editing, instead of
some rule that says the pieces have to be joined correctly according to this
or that. What you ought to say is: everything that can be said should be
suppressed, but at the same time leaving room for the axiom to be reversed
so that the opposite principle applies, keeping only what is said, as Straub
does. In La Chinoise I leaned to the side of what is said. But the result is
fundamentally different from Straub because it's not the same things that
are being said. Bunuel suppressed everything that was said, because even
what is said is seen. And the film has an extraordinary freedom. You get
the impression that Bunuel is 'playing' at cinema in the way that Bach
must have played at the organ towards the end of his life.
Translated by Diana Matias

Notes
1 These extracts from the interview can be supplemented by further extracts,
largely related to discussion of La Chinoise, translated as 'Interview on La Chi/wise'
in Jean Collet, Jean-Luc Godard, New York, Crown, 1970.
I I i
2 Les Aventuriers and Deux billets pour Mexico, directed by Robert Enrico and
Christian-Jaque, 1966 and 1967, respectively, both large-budget adventure
movies. Luc Moullet (see Ch. 13, note 3), meanwhile, was making interesting
movies on minuscule budgets. In his 'Notes sur Ie nouveau spectateur', Calziers
177, April 1966, translated as 'Notes on the New Spectator' in this volume, Ch.
21, Comolli refers to Moullet as a 'precursor' of the 'new cinema', while Godard,
in a passage from this interview omitted here, calls Moullet's 1966 film Brigitte

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 Jean-Luc Godard: 'Struggling on Two Fronts'

et Brigitte 'a revolutionary film - otherwise I don't rightly see what a revol-
utionary film could be'. Mouller s 1967 Les Contrebandieres was voted by Cahiers
tenth best film shown in 1968.
3 The reference seems to be to Rivette's L'Amour fau, released in 1968.
4 The 'new cinema' gravitated towards film festivals other than those associated
with the market-place, like Cannes, or quality and prestige, like Venice: Hyeres
called itself the 'Festival du jeune cinema' and Montreal specialized in 16mm
independent production.
S Daniel Johnson, Premier of Quebec 1966-8.
6 Godard's relationship with Leacock, mentioned optimistically here, did not last
very long. During 1968 Godard worked with Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker on
a 16mm picture, aile American Movie, or 1 A.M. Godard abandoned the project
in March 1970 but some of the footage, plus some footage of the shooting itself,
was put together by Pennebaker to make One P.M. (Le. One Pennebaker Movie),
released in 1971.
7 Peter Emmanuel Goldman, whose 1966 film Echoes of Silence won the Special
Directors Award at the Pesaro Festival 1966 and was widely shown at subsequent
festivals. Jean-Claude Biette's article, 'Sur Echoes of Silence', Cahiers 188, March
1967, is translated in Cahiers du Cinema in English, no. 11, September 1967.
8 Jean-Louis Comolli addresses the question of the 'destruction of the image' in
his Calliers 191, June 1967, review of Godard's sketch Anticipation, translated in
Royal Brown, Focus on Godard, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1972; and
these points are pursued further in relation to La Chinoise in Comolli's 'Le point
sur l'image', Cahiers 194, October 1967, translated as 'La Chinaise' in Ian Cameron,
ed., The Films of Jean-Luc Godard, London, Studio Vista, second ed., revised and
enlarged, 1969.
9 Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964, in which all the dialogue is
sung, was promoted as a film 'en-chante', i.e. both 'in song' and 'magic', and it
is this that Godard is referring to here; there are interesting similarities between
the two films in relation to their stylized use of colour.

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