Two Or Three Things I Know About Her... (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle)

The Believer magazine's March/April Film Issue comes with a DVD of a collection of Jean-Luc Godard's travels in the US. The first film is a 40 minute discussion, called Two American Audiences, with a group of film students at NYU. It's fascinating, especially as the film they're talking about is one of my favourites, La Chinoise.



Towards the end of the film (the fourth video in this post, at about 9 minutes), Godard says that what he liked about Brecht was that he "did philosophy through art". This is, I think, what Godard always tried to do, and Two or Three Things... is a prime example of it. (Weekend would be another, and possibly La Chinoise, although it's more performative).



As such it comes across as a film essay, or a journalistic investigation. It was inspired by a newspaper article on housewife prostitution in Paris, and illustrates Godard's theory that to survive in Paris it was a necessity. (According to the DVD booklet at least).



Compared to some of his other films from the same period that dealt with social and political problems - Vivre Sa Vie, Le Petit Soldat - this is less iconic-looking, less interventionist, but more thoughtful, introspective. A little dull though, too.



The problem, I think, is that it never really gets going. It doesn't build up a head of steam, the cutting is quick but quite unenergetic. There are interesting moments, such as when the whispered narration (by Godard himself) meditates on the relationship between language and image while we see shots of garage signs, street signs, shop titles etc. But generally it has something of the dirge about it. Perhaps it's the tone, which is the same throughout. The film's register never changes, which is uncommon for a 60s Godard film. The viewer is so used to seeing changes in timbre that when they don't happen it feels as if a minute's segment has frozen and extended for ten, twenty minutes.



It's interesting, then, to remind oneself of the highly dynamic, sometimes simple, sometimes complex political films Godard made in the 60s. (Letter to Jane, above, is an extension, or reply, to Tout Va Bien). One can perhaps see in Two or Three Things... the transition between the lighter - yet still socially conscious - films of the early-to-mid 60s and the "political period" films he made for five years or so from 1967's La Chinoise, continuing with Made in USA, Tout Va Bien and many others that are difficult nowadays to get hold of.



I wonder if that is the problem with Two or Three Things... - that it marks a transition, and is therefore neither one thing nor another.

Zazie dans le metro

In the recent portmanteau film Paris Je T'aime, Sylvain Chomet (who made Belleville Rendezvous) tries to create a live-action cartoon, featuring two clowns who meet in jail and fall in love.

Zazie dans le metro, Louis Malle's film from 1960, is a feature-length, Tommy and Jerry-style live-action cartoon. Full of Technicolor colour and quick cutting, the film is a joyous ode to Paris, a gentle depiction of childhood clashing with "the real world" and a love letter to cabaret-style frolics.

Les Amants (The Lovers)

Watching this I remembered something from French National Cinema, a module I took at Roehampton. The New Wave, whilst displaying the influence of American noir and B-movies, was fired by the desire to provide alternatives to the dominant modes of French cinema, namely films about the bourgeoisie, featuring large country chateaux and aristocrats. The Italian Neo-Realist films of the early 1950s were a similar reaction; the Italians called them "white telephone" films (because they always featured people using white telephones, duh!).

Louis Malle's Les Amants, made in 1958, has chateaux and aristocrats and is a little on the dull side. But it also has Jeanne Moreau, scandalous-in-the-50s nudity and an encouragement of adultery and child-abandonment.

In The Loop

A gentler, more BBC-ish Dr Strangelove for our times?

Let The Right One In

Reasons I liked this:

- Any scary aspect is created out of a wonderful creation and nurturing of atmosphere, rather than on moments that make you jump. The film takes place in a world in which strange, scary things happen - a man goes round killing people by drugging them, hanging them upside down and draining their blood, a small girl vampire jumps down on passersby, a man deforms himself with acid to prevent his apprehension by the police...

- As Claire said, it's ripe for film students. It tackles a coming-of-age story, a love story, a story of obsession, of desire, of family, of the alienation of childhood and gets it all right. The vampire stuff is done well, but the story is about far more than that.

- The cinematography. There's never a shot that takes you out of the story, that makes you go "wow", but there are lots of quietly amazing shots. It opens with a distorted reflection of Oskar on a windowpane, and there are great shots of schools, shops and the city at night.

- The ending. Absolutely terrifying, absolutely wonderful!

Definitely another contender for a film of the year.

In The City of Sylvia

Reasons I loved this:

- Made me forget it was a film. A scene of a man sitting on the terrace cafe of Strasbourg's Conservatoire watching people drinking and chatting lasts for over 20 minutes. As a summation of another film put it, "pure cinema". As Peter Bradshaw put it, "In the City of Sylvia reminds you that most cinema discourages you from looking, really looking".

- Sound design as good as Elephant. Came out of the cinema with an exaggerated ear for footsteps, the rise and fall of chattering voices.

- The lack of dialogue. One scene of a conversation in nearly an hour and a half.
&
- the quietness of the film.

- And the length of the takes. Long, long, long...

- The loveliness of Strasbourg in the summer. Made me want to go there.
&
- The depth of field of the compositions. Watching a square opening onto many alleys with no idea where people were going to come from, sound emanating from behind the camera, beyond the camera, people crossing, passing each other and the camera, a bottle rolling down the street, a bicycle going past...

- The hints at other directors - Hitchcock, Linklater etc ...

- The ability to create amazing suspense from a simple encounter. When the man finally asks the girl if she's Sylvia, I, like Bradshaw, was on the edge of my seat.

- The many interpretations it gives. Lil hated it (at first?) for its focus on beautiful women. I saw it as an extremely subtle comment on the images we create, both in terms of the dreams we make for ourselves based on very little fact, and the images we as a society create of women and romantic love.

- The imaginative visuals created from filming the reflections the windows of moving trams - people look ghostly, like apparitions, their form not certain.

- This is definitely in my top films of the year so far. Can't make up my mind whether it has toppled The Class or not. Here's the trailer:



And here, actually, is the first 9 minutes of the film! This Youtube user has uploaded the whole film in 9 parts. As there's hardly any dialogue, anyone can watch it!

The Man From London

Very disappointing after the masterful first twenty minutes, especially from the director that brought us this:



How wonderful this sequence is! It could be a film on its own.