Friday, July 24, 2009
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her Made In USA
Criterion has recently released two Jean Luc Godard films that were more or less created simultaneously in late 1966. Made In USA is the last feature he made with Anna Karina. 2 or 3 Things I Know About You features Marina Vlady, who at that time was a veteran Old Wave actress. Karina was Godard's wife and cinematic muse for most of the sixties. Early during the production of 2 or 3 Things, Godard proposed to Vlady, but was rejected. This may contribute to the feeling that we never get close to her in the film. In fact, most of the better scenes in the film are those with other actresses.
Made in USA still retains elements of plot even though it is also contains lots of Hollywood and political allusions as well as generally weird disjointed Godardisms. There are gangsters, cops and gun play. Karina's character takes on the role of a kind of detective trying to uncover who killed a former lover. It is not a conventional movie by any means, but in many ways resembles one.
On the other hand, 2 or 3 Things,is a kind of essay film commenting and prodding at life in the large apartment suburbs outside of central Paris and the consumerism that accompanies it. When they are paired, Made in USA really does look more like a normal movie. 2 or 3 Things feels like a random collection of impressions about these new areas of Paris. Godard whispers a narration about the current state of things filled with political references. The film is inspired by articles that Godard had encountered about housewives that were coming into Paris to supplement their income by being prostitutes. But ultimately it is an intriguing premise that does not come to be realized to any extent.
What I enjoy most about Godard of this period are the framing of his shots. He is fond of these wide screen images where his characters are backed with brightly colored backgrounds. Usually the human subject is a woman head or head and shoulders only located in the center or lower right corner of the frame. The bright colors of his background subject are usually bright with intense color.
It was intriguing to see these films back to back. Their contrast is profound. In one of Made in USA's supplemental features authors Richard Brody and Colin McCabe, who both wrote books on Godard, talk about how these films are a kind of cusp for Godard who would soon retreat from film making for quite sometime proclaiming that "Cinema is Dead" on his way out the door. Speaking of dead, Paula Nelson (Karina) does two shootings near the end of Made in USA. The first is Jean Pierre Leaud, (with the name of Donald Siegel, like I say, Hollywood references are everywhere here) the boy from Truffaut's The 400 Blows who later became a kind of symbolic figure for the French New Wave for Godard, Truffaut ond others. Also near the end Karina offs a writer named David Goodis, who is thought to be a slightly veiled version of Godard. Out with the old, in with the new. And if 2 or 3 Things points to that future, it is a cinema that continued to focus on idea vs. character, unless you count Godard himself as the character moving on his own path, a path that would soon include a dive into Maoism.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:16 PM
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