"Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics", Colin MacCabe

Colin MacCabe is a British academic, writer, film producer and a professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh. A former editor of Screen magazine and a collaborator of British Film Institute (BFI), he has written books on James Joyce (James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word) and Jean-Luc Godard (Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70). His book Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics analyses visual and sound aspects of the French filmmaker films since the Nouvelle Vague years until his television work, investigating Godard’s oeuvre through a technological, political and sexual perspective. In each chapter Godard gives a brief comment through interviews conducted by MacCabe.


Excerpts:

“[On Une Femme Mariée] When we are made privy to her inner thoughts they offer no coherent account of her situation but rather a stream of disconnected phrases. This lack of a coherent view enables the film to break down a unified image of a woman’s body, held in a man’s look, and to provide instead a series of disconnected images which resist attempts at unification.”

“What was necessary was the disruption of the traditional organization of Hollywood cinema so as to investigate how images found their meaning within specific articulations determined by ideological and political struggles and to engage the film viewer in that investigation. Only through such an engagement could there be a possibility of making a political film.”

“MacCabe: But what are you trying to do?
Godard: I need to talk to me and to show me talking, to show and to show me showing. And when I’ve done that I need to talk about it technically and philosophically. I need to have a philosophical talk on the technical aspect and technical talk on the philosophical aspect. It’s like Socrates, who was just trying to talk to people. And then everybody got so completely angry that they obliged him to commit suicide. He was just trying to say ‘Are you sure?’ – which was his way. (…) All he was saying to people was ‘Are you sure you’re right?’ ‘Is your hair well-cut?’ ‘Do you think that’s the right way to cut it?’ And they said ‘Oh, Socrates. What are you doing? What are you driving at?’ And he said ‘I’m not driving at anything but are you sure your hair is right?’"

Link to the complete book in PDF:

Jean-Luc Godard

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