Tag: film-as-art

If I had to pick a filmmaker whose output might consistently be described by the term film-as-art it would be Jean-Luc Godard. Even in his 80s he is pushing the experimental window. When he was recently convinced to try something in 3D, he used cellphone cameras. He was an early adopter of video, and often uses the quirks of media in experimental ways. His sound design is so brilliant that he has released audio CDs that stand alone with no visuals. There probably is no film medium that he hasn’t worked with in his 50-plus-year career. It is hard to say if there is even a definitive list that contains every film he has made.

The trickiest part about recommending Godard to people who don’t already revere him is figuring out which films to recommend. Only about three of his films (Breathless, Alphaville and Contempt) could be described as straight narratives. His tendency to deconstruct narratives and to mix formats can leave critics scratching their heads and declaring his work “unwatchable.” His “musical” (A Woman is a Woman) includes periods of silence. It is one of the first experimental works into which he inserted intertitles like those in a silent movie.

Although he has not mellowed with age, his experiments look increasingly assured. His recent Histoire (10 years in the making) charts the entire history of cinema using layers of moving images and a sound design that could stand alone as an audio work. One of his most recent, Film socialisme (his first in digital video) was filmed on the Costa Concordia, before it ran aground. It makes the experience of a cruise look like an actual nightmare. When Hollywood recently tried to award him an honorary Oscar, he sent his regrets.

The film I usually try to start people out with is Weekend. Until recently this was tricky. VHS copies are still listed on Amazon for over $50 a pop, but Criterion has now given it a deluxe release. Made in 1967, the plot (such as there is) involves the attempts of a couple to collect an inheritance. Both of them secretly have other lovers and plan to kill their partners once the money is in hand. En route to the expected collection, there is a running motif of car accidents. Their travails in traffic include one of the most famous tracking shots in cinema. Lasting eight minutes, it is a long pan of a traffic jam. There are animals, people playing catch with a beach ball, picnics and carnage. Eventually the car is lost and the high weirdness kicks in. During the course of what follows, the couple is kidnapped by a cannibal hippie cult and start to encounter living people from children’s books. As the structure of the film starts to unravel, one of the last bits of action is a long drum solo in a forest. As disjointed as this all might sound, in the hands of a master, it all makes a weird perfect sense.