Chapter 8 "I think underwater"

In early October, French film director Jean-Luc Godard published A History of Cinema, a four-volume masterpiece based on his television series of the same name. At the end of October, he released the second volume of "Godard Sees Godard", introducing all his works from 1984 to 1997. His film collection from 1950 to 1984 was published in 1985.The film history research and self-summarization of this world-class director immediately aroused great interest from the European media. "I like to make connections and comparisons. People always like to read stories from capitalized historical moments, and I'm not trying to prove that there are some events in the history of movies. I want to find and analyze the relationship between this event and that event. See Look at the difference between what I found and what other people found," Godard explained to the book critics, "I am old now (he is 68 years old), and the older I am, the deeper I think. I have grasped the things on the water. I can't stop, I'm thinking underwater."

In 1959, Jean-Luc Godard made "Exhaustion" and has since become a world-renowned director.This movie shows a complete social rebellion—the clumsy thief Michel. The plot is extremely incoherent, and the scenes are changed frequently. It also reflects the disorder and direction of society and the complete disconnection of people's social environment.When filming that film, he wrote his lines every morning and read them to the actors on the spot. He said to himself: "I deliberately only sketched the outline, speeded up the shooting, and improvised more. In the film industry, a shooting method like this , I’ve never seen a precedent.” The shooting time of the film was only 4 weeks in total, and Godard didn’t need to divide the script, rent a studio, or use any artificial light sources, and hid the camera in a trolley borrowed from the post office and pushed it over , pull it over... What is really creative is the neurotic and fast-changing editing technique, which stunned all audiences and filmmakers, but what does it matter? This is the "New Wave" led by Godard, which affects The film concepts and film techniques of the subsequent generations.

The French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville said: "The New Wave has no specific style. If the New Wave does have a certain style, it is Godard's style." Film historian Georges Sadour even regarded Godard as an undoubted genius, "In terms of technique, no one has been able to break the stereotypes so skillfully. Godard burned all the grammar of film language and other syntax of films." After the rapid end of the vigorous New Wave film movement, almost only Godard is still exploring and creating newer means of film expression. In 1962, "Her Life" (also translated as "As You Like") tells the misadventures of a prostitute Nana. In the tavern, the camera is placed behind the characters to shoot the novel and bold composition, and the sudden machine gun sound is cut and edited... and so on, which make the film full of vitality and vitality.

Only young people who admire him can regard Godard as an innovator in film aesthetics. Godard's greatest feature is probably that he persistently and keenly followed the political and social reality of his time, and sometimes even overloaded it. Reality. This was the case with the 1967 film "The Chinese Girl".In the noisy debate, people have a foreboding of the "Wang Yue Gehe" in 1968.If we say that the previous 15 feature films aimed to expose and criticize capitalist society (such as "Little Soldier" reflecting the Algerian War and "Contempt" full of cultural reflections), various explorations of film language (such as being regarded as New Wave "Exhaustion" in the Film Manifesto), then starting from "The Chinese Girl", Godard hopes to shoot a film that aims to establish new people and a new world.In his early films, he was keen on themes such as decadents, women, sex, and prostitution. After the 1970s, politics became his main theme, in addition to sex and technology.Godard said: "To make a film is to ask yourself the question 'where do we stand'."

Godard's political films seek to solve some real problems. At the same time, he uses films to express his views, and often injects his innermost thoughts into the dialogue.These issues are presented in a manner that is not far from the taste of the majority; if necessary, he presents arguments that do not go beyond elementary philosophy.All of these come from his "ambition" and fanatical affection for movies.For him, film is firstly a kind of morality through which he pursues truth; secondly, film is also a kind of sacred object equivalent to metaphysics; finally, it is a kind of "politics", which means that film can make him live more freely. , because it affords him a unique means of understanding the world around him.His creative tendency of "political" films can be traced back to the traditions of Eisenstein and Vertov in the Soviet Union, but what is thought-provoking is that all kinds of "rational films" must eventually damage film creation itself.In the 1970s, Godard resumed the production of commercial films, and at the same time he produced a considerable number of TV programs, and began to make some clear-cut and distinctive summaries of himself and the entire history of film.

We cannot but be fascinated by Godard: his exasperation and tolerance, his prejudices, his scum, his exasperating, explosive simplification.His films belong to meteors falling from unknown skies, often illuminating what we cannot see.