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A WORD ABOUT

GODARD

~ Satyajit Ray

‘I DON’T LIKE Godard’ is a

statement one frequently hears at Film


festivals. Now, I don’t like Godard too. But
then, ‘like’ is a word I seldom use to describe my feeling about truly modern artists. Do we really like
Pablo Picasso, or Claude-Michel Schönberg, or Eugène Ionesco, or Alain Robbe-Grillet? We are variously
provoked and stimulated by them, and our appreciation of them is wholly on an intellectual level. Liking
suggests an easy involvement of the senses, a spontaneous ‘taking to’, which I doubt if the modern artist
even claims from his public.

Godard has been both dismissed summarily, and praised to the skies, and the same films have
provoked opposite reactions. This is inevitable when a director consistently demolishes sacred
conventions, while at the same time packing his films with obviously striking things.

Godard’s main unconventionality lies in completely doing away with development in terms of plot.
Some make this claim for Antonioni too. But this is false. Beneath an exterior of apparent arbitrariness,
Antonioni’s films conceal an almost classical formal pattern. With Godard there is no such concealment.

Sometimes there is a theme. Une Femme Mariée may be said to be about a woman vacillating between
her husband and herlover, and when you’ve said that, you’ve said everything – ornothing. The theme
only serves as a springboard for a series of dissertations, some related to it, and some as wide off the
markas one can imagine.

Up till now, a director’s hallmark was supposed to reside inhis personal approach to his theme. One
looked for thespecial signature of an artist. If Godard has a hallmark, it is inrepeated references to other
directors, other films (both goodand bad), other forms of art, and to a myriad phenomena of
contemporary life. Thesereferences do not congeal intoa single significant attitude, but merely reflect
the alertnessof Godard’s mind, and therange and variety of hisinterests.

The upshot of all this is thata Godard film assumes for methe aspect of a collage, and Ifor one am
convinced that thatis how his works ought to be judged, and that is where liestheir aesthetic validity.

We know that in painting acollage is a form of abstractionin which seemingly unrelatedelements are
brought together to create a pattern of contrasts. Some of these elements – such asa guitar or a wine
bottle in a collage by Braque or Picasso – have‘meaning’. But since the guitar and the wine bottle are
taken outof their context and placed in juxtaposition with elements whollyunrelated to the idea of
music or drinking, they assume a qualityof abstraction. What symbolic value still clings to them adds
asubtle overtone to the collage – a touch of humanism in a mélangeof tones and textures.

Likewise, Godard has scenes in his films which begin to suggesta human involvement. But they are
inevitably cut short ordeveloped with deliberate illogicality, as otherwise they would be ‘conventional’
and, therefore, out of key with the rest. Inmore than one Godard film, key characters have been killed
off by gunmen at the end, and there have been no logical reason forsuch obliteration.

Now, to a mind attuned to the conventional unfolding of plotand character, such things may well seem
upsetting. But one cannever blame Godard for thwarting expectations, for he is carefulto establish his
credo from the very opening shots. In Une FemmeEst Une Femme, there is a prologue in which some of
the mainsources of the film’s style are actually named in screen-fillingletters. Vivre Sa Vie states clearly
in the credits that it is ‘A Studyin Twelve Scenes’ and Masculin Feminin calls itself a film infourteen
fragments.

The trouble, really, is not with Godard, but with his critics –or, at least, a good many of them – who are
constantly trying tofit a square peg into a round whole. With any other art, I wouldhave said with
confidence that Godard would win in the end.But in the ruthless and unserious world of commercial
cinemathat he has to operate, I have my doubts.

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