"Everything is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard", Richard Brody

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is, arguably, not only the most important living filmmaker, but also one of the greatest directors of all-time. A philosopher thinking with a camera, raising questions about cinema, society, politics and History, in innovative and non-conforming ways, his body of work has influenced filmmakers from Europe to America, from the mainstream to the avant-garde, more than any other director. He is best known for being part of the Nouvelle Vague with revolutionary movies as the cinephilic and exuberant noir À Bout de Souffle (Breathless, 1960), the existentialist Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live, 1962) or the disconsolately romantic Le Mépris (Contempt, 1963). From the end of the '60s until mid-'70s he entered in a militant phase with Jean-Pierre Gorin and continued a controversial oeuvre with political films as Vladimir et Rosa (1971). In the '80s he returned to, in a way, more commercial pictures as Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (1980) or Prénom: Carmen (1985). In the last decades, his work has gained an elegiacal beauty and melancholically look towards History and the cinema itself, using different resources as video (as in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1998)), digital technology (as in Film Socialisme (2010)) or even 3D (as in Adieu au Language (2014)). The innovative editing, pictorial compositions and mixture of quotes from several literary and cinematographic sources in his films have gained him passionate admirers as well as its detractors.

Richard Brody (1948) is an American film critic that writes for The New York Times. His first book, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, published in 2008, is a detailed biography of the influential filmmaker, made from hundreds of interviews. In it, Brody delineates Godard's an arc between Godard's early years of criticism and his later years of artistic reclusion. His relations with politics, women, the friends of the Nouvelle Vague and, above all, with the cinema, are exposed in a honest and empathic way. At the same time, Brody provides a critical attention to each of Godard's films, creating a properly contextualized study of one of the most dense, enigmatic and complex careers that Art has given.

Excerpts:
"He took out a two-page ad in the special Cannes issue of Le Film français, which featured the following bit of puffery: 'What does the movie-going public want? said Griffith. A revolver and a girl! It is in response to this desire that I have shot and Columbia is distributing Band of Outsiders, a story of gold which will sell lots of tickets. [Signed] Jean-Luc Godard.'"

"The truly important French film school, which had produced the New Wave, was the Cinémathèque, which held its exams in the pages of Cahiers du cinéma."

"Godard explains his principal thesis regarding Hitchcock: 'We have forgotten why Joan Fontaine leans over the edge of a cliff and why Joel McCrea went to Holland. We have forgotten what Montgomery Clift swore to be eternally silent about and why Janet Leigh stops at the Bates Motel and why Teresa Wright is still in love with Uncle Charlie. We forgot what Henry Fonda is not completely guilty of and exactly why the American government hired Ingrid Bergman. But we remember a handbag. But we remember a bus in the desert. But we remember a glass of milk, the blades of a windmill, a hairbrush. But we remember a row of bottles, a pair of glasses, a music score, a clutch of keys. Because, through them, and with them, Alfred Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander, Julius Caesar, Hitler, Napoleon failed: he took control of the universe.'"

Link to the complete book in PDF:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TR0buYLLSH93RQeUYERlCfhNltzD3Vpn/view?usp=sharing

Jean-Luc Godard