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We Must Not Mean What We Say: On Godard's 'Le Petit Soldat'

While philosopher Stanley Cavell endeavors to show that we must mean what we say in a very important sense, Godard's Bruno Forestier of Le Petit Soldat suggests that we simply cannot and must not mean what we say.


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Reviews

TIFF 2017: Le Redoutable

Blinded by love for Godard, Le Redoutable is an uncritically sexist bore.

Film

Les Durs and the Anatomy of the (French) Tough Guy: Gabin, Ventura, and Belmondo

At Les Durs (The Tough Guys) Film Fest, the tough guy is a bulwark against decay; he's the guarantor of value -- even if that value is compromised by the world around him.

Music

Notes, Hoaxes, and Jokes: Silkworm's 'Lifestyle' - "Contempt"

Lifestyle's sun-kissed opening track finds our heroes in languid mood, contemplating foreign climes and foreign bodies.

Film

Jean-Luc Godard and the 3D Dog: An Actress' Tale

Starring in a film directed by Jean-Luc Godard is an intimidating prospect (especially when it's in 3D), but not only did Héloise Godet rise to the challenge, she's starting to get rave reviews of her own.

Film

The Magical Presence of Anna Karina: More Than Godard's Muse

It’s not that Anna Karina couldn’t act, but that she didn’t have to. Her physical presence was the art, and her beauty, in and of itself, was a significant contribution to the culture.

Film

'Room 237' and The History of Cinematic Representations of Cinephilia

Room 237 is one of the only films that respects and even admires cinephilia and its various forms.

Film

Boundaries Are All Fictions in Godard's "Breathless"

Even now, after countless reviews and essays, it's easy to be captivated by the way Godard obfuscates our expectations for cinematic art.

Reviews

Effortlessly Cool and Youthful: 'Band of Outsiders'

While Band of Outsiders is less frequently canonized than certain of Godard's other works, it can still rightfully be read as a touchstone in the development of film form and cinema history.

Film

Portraits of Love and Death: Godard's Nostalgic Cinema in 'Le Mépris'

Godard's Contempt (Le Mépris) is not a mere telling of rejection but of absolute dissolution, of modernized romance and the failings of modernity.

Siobhan Lyons
Film

Are You in a Film or in Reality? Jean-Luc Godard's 'Weekend' Will Have You Wondering

Criterion's splendid edition of Weekend gives insight into the mind of visionary director Jean-Luc Godard, who aimed at nothing less than challenging the dominant social and cinematic paradigms of his time.

Film

The 100 Essential Directors Part 4: Samuel Fuller - John Huston

On our fourth day, this journey through the 100 Essential Film Directors continues to twist and turn in unexpected ways. From bold, opinionated Hollywood voices to those who essentially created the language of cinema, today will shed light on kings of genre like Samuel Fuller, through lions like the legendary John Huston.

Books

'French Cinema' Is a Tangled, Rumpled Jumble of a History

French Cinema is a popular history that makes its own eccentric claims on what that history should be.

Film

ReFramed No. 3: Jean-Luc Godard - The Lost Later Years (1990-2011)

In this final installment in ReFramed's dissection of Godard, Cronk and Marsh consider age, attitude, and the angst of misplaced elitism.

Jordan Cronk and Calum Marsh
Visual Arts

The Changing Nature of the Nature of Art

As artists have become less concerned with telling stories and more concerned with creating emotional connections and mimicking experiences, art has shifted from creating beauty to expressing the heady nature of 'truth'.

Film

ReFramed No.1: Jean-Luc Godard - The Political Years (1968 - 1979)

In this introductory entry in a continuing reevaluation of cinema's standard bearers, film fans Jordan Cronk and Calum Marsh dissect mid-period Godard, giving the French experimentalist and agent provocateur a long deserved defense of his post-'60s output.

Jordon Cronk and Calum Marsh
Film

Saint Fonda in the Backyard: The Iconic Jane Works It Out

Golden Age Hollywood scion, feminist activist, and general all-around bad-ass Jane Fonda is back, and this time she's hitting the campaign trail on behalf of the health of boomers and senior citizens.

Film

Why Godard Leaves Me Breathless (In a Good Way)

Godard’s inaugural masterpiece, in spite of its canonical status, is still as vibrant on the screen today as it was fifty years ago

Games

Imitating Intimacy in Video Games

Sex is very often (and very unfortunately) just a game.

Reviews

Vivre Sa Vie / My Life to Live

This film seeks redemption among the ruins, yet every moment of existential transcendence comes crashing back into a flat screen, an immobile camera, and, ultimately, a lifeless body.

Reviews

La Chinoise

A group of Mao-influenced French students struggle with ideology, the divide between theory and praxis, and the other myriad conflicts of starry-eyed revolutionaries.

Reviews

Le Gai savoir

This is the ne plus ultra of intellectual torture tests, dripping with intertextuality and esoteric post-structural philosophy.

Reviews

Pierrot le Fou

This film illustrates the genius and brilliance of Godard, who always was a step or two ahead of most critics, academics, and viewers.

Reviews

Jean-Luc Godard: 3-Disc Collector's Edition

For all of pretense surrounding these films and their attempts to grapple with "big ideas", they are, ultimately, experiences that one must live through; they demand viewing and listening.

Chadwick Jenkins
Books

Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

On censorship he says: "It tended to be assumed in European films that human beings were born with sexual organs and at a certain point in their lives began to use them, not always in socially approved ways."

Michael Buening
Reviews

Breathless

It's hard to see the revolutionary aspects of Breathless is part thriller, part noir, and part romance. It’s stylish and sexy and tres cool. It's Hollywood, reimagined via Paris.

Jake Meaney
Reviews

Hail Mary (1985)

A totally confounding and disappointing film, coupled with another that finds depth in its relative economy.

Jake Meaney
Reviews

Band of Outsiders (Bande à part) (1964)

It is about kids played by adults, a comedy, a tragedy, a buddy movie, a heist picture, a romance, an exercise in style, and a paean to B-movies and American gangster films.

Michael S. Smith
Film

In Praise of Love (2001)

In its preoccupations with history, In Praise of Love suggests if one has no history, one has no basis for thinking about or defining oneself.

Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece
Film

Keep Your Right Up! (Soigne Ta Droite!) (1987/2002)

concerned with asserting the significance of art in a world that isn't interested in art.

Matt Langdon
Reviews
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